Amazing Adventures: the Inhumans
by Scottenkainen
Summary: Cross-posted from the Marvel Lab archives - Follow the adventures of Medusa, Karnak, Black Bolt, and the rest of the Royal Family of the Inhumans as they adventure through Europe and Asia! It's 1971 all over again, with a twist!
1. Chapter 1

Amazing Adventures of the 1970s: Featuring the Inhumans #1

by Scott Casper

"You Never Saw The Real Me"

May 17, 1971.

Outside Rome, Italy.

No one in Rome had grieved when Count Nefaria had his castle moved, brick by brick, to America seven years ago. And everyone had smiled and whispered things about Nefaria when his luck turned bad across the Atlantic and he suffered a series of defeats at the hands of superheroes. When he returned home, no one hoped he would stay, but all felt powerless to prevent it. This was still Count Nefaria, after all. Worse, he had come home to lick his wounds and, if the analogy held, would be even more dangerous now, like a wounded animal. So everyone avoided, if they could, the villa on the outskirts of Rome that everyone knew to be where Nefaria was staying.

It was a beautiful spring day, early evening, and the sun hung low in a near-cloudless sky over the countryside. The villa sat alone on a hill, surrounded by vineyards, a grove of fig trees, and a high, protective fence. The vineyard and the grove were too soon for harvest, but the flowers were in full bloom in the well-tended gardens between them and the villa. Sheep were grazing on the hillside. It was a model of self-sufficiency and no doubt Nefaria would be dining that night on his own lamb chops with his own wine.

Medusa knew this place well. With a snarl of revulsion playing over her lips, she recalled the nights she had spent as a guest there. Nefaria had long used the villa as a guest house, since most had been afraid to stay at the castle, so close to Nefaria's infamous dungeon. Medusa had stayed here the night before she stole the Castifiore Emeralds for him. Now she walked down the middle of the only road that led in or out of the villa's grounds, her low-heeled boots disturbing the dirt of the road with each long stride. Her long red hair was tensed, falling in curls down to her mid-thigh, and bounced with each step. It was a hot day and she was warm in her tight-fitting, dark blue bodysuit, purple gloves and boots, and dark mask, but it seemed appropriate to her to wear the outfit she had long worn as Europe's most infamous burglar, here, at the end of the long road of redemption.

The gates at the entrance to the villa grounds opened on their own as Medusa approached them. She passed, unmolested, past the guard house inside the gate and was allowed to proceed unescorted to the villa. The villa was two complete stories high, with a half-sized third floor mounted on top. The front entrance had a balcony over it supported by four columns. It was not nearly the size of the old castle, but still as impressive as any millionaire's mansion. Medusa had been surprised by the dearth of guards so far, but she could see a sniper half-concealed in an upstairs window with his rifle trained on her. She could only imagine there had been others since the moment she entered the villa's grounds, if not sooner. Moving under the balcony and pausing before the front doors, she took a deep breath. This was it.

A goon in a suit opened the front door, stepped out, and held it for Medusa, his jacket pulled tight over his shoulder where he had his gun obviously holstered. Medusa pretended not to notice him, purposely walking past him with a regal air of detachment. The foyer had yellow-painted walls and a wood-paneled floor mostly covered in a thick, colorful rug. The rug ran out of the foyer into the front hall on the far side. The front hall was set up much like his old castle's audience hall, with a dais and throne at the rear of the room before the grand staircase, an ornate wooden table before the dais with upholstered chairs all around it, and alternating hanging tapestries and standing suits of armor lining the walls. The exits from the room on this level were partially concealed by hanging yellow drapes. A brass chandelier hung from the high ceiling overhead and gave off an almost unnoticeable electric glow, so bright was the sunlight from the upper floor windows shining down on Count Nefaria.

Nefaria looked to have aged quite well since their last meeting, the white hair concealed at his temples. He wore his customary monocle and ruffled shirt, looking every inch the old-fashioned aristocrat which he wished to remind everyone he was. Nefaria was seated, not upon the throne, but at the table, leaning back in a chair and eating grapes. He observed Medusa enter and reacted with mock surprise, tossing the grapes back into their bowl and standing up with arms extended.

"Well, Medusa! What a welcome surprise!" he exclaimed in Italian. "It has been far too long since you last graced my halls!"

"Luchino," Medusa said with a nod, purposely affording the count the least amount of courtesy by referring to him by his first name only.

Nefaria's face fell, but he caught himself before his features could sneer and restored his calm façade. "Why, whatever is the matter, Madame Medusa? Can you actually be here in need of work?"

"You bring up my past and it is that past that brought me here," Medusa said in equally fluent Italian, her hands on her hips, "and surely it is no surprise to you that I do not come as a friend It has been over a year since I betrayed the Frightful Four. Since then, I have dedicated myself to finding my every employer of old and destroying them. Even if you have stayed in your villa this whole time, surely word of it has reached you by now."

Count Nefaria only shrugged and smiled. "I had. And I knew you were coming here. The return of the Castafiore Emeralds to their original owner was all over the morning paper. I remember hiring you for that job well. But am I to be surprised each time there is a falling out among thieves?"

Medusa straightened up and dropped her hands straight down to her sides. Her hair began to stir and rustle as if on its own accord. "But I am no longer a thief, for I am no longer the woman I was. I am not Madame Medusa, but remember now that I was and am Princess Medusalith Amaquelin."

Nefaria gave a contemptuous laugh. He turned his back on Medusa and walked to his throne. "A princess?" he asked. "Of what royal family? What country? I am the one of noble blood," he said, turning around and sitting on his throne. "You insult royalty at your peril."

"It does not matter that you believe me," Medusa said, finally walking up to the edge of the table. "Only that you believe you will finally answer for your crimes. All of them."

"You have been away from Rome too long," Nefaria said angrily. "I may have had my setbacks in the U.S., but here, I am invincible. Though, 'here' can be quite subjective," he added, his mood softening again. A momentary scowl gave way to a morbid grin. "I regret I am not actually 'here' at all, but busy elsewhere. So I will have to witness your death remotely."

From his control room, Count Nefaria finished speaking into the microphone and watched Medusa confront his hologram as he pressed the electric ray trigger. The look of malevolent glee on his face was chilling as he watched the bolts of lightning lance down from the chandelier towards Medusa, but that look turned quickly to utter astonishment as the bolts passed right through her. His eyes opened so wide that he lost his monocle and barely noticed it fall onto the control console. The control console was a large metal desk that half-surrounded Nefaria where he sat. It was covered in switches, buttons, and lights within reach of his hands and above them was a bank of viewscreens.

"Did you really think I had never stolen anything from you?" Medusa said in the room below. "Your electro-ray discs are fairly adept at holography and voice projection, but I took it back to my homeland and we made improvements," she said with an obvious mocking tone.

Nefaria growled like an animal and hammered his fists on the control console in frustration. Then he grabbed his microphone in one hand and flipped a switch with the other so he could contact his men in different rooms. "Rocco! Uberto! Scramble your men! Rocco's team, search the villa! Uberto's team, search the grounds! Find Madame Medusa! Now!" He toggled more switches and the view screens before him switched to more and more security cameras throughout the villa. Failing to see Medusa on any of them, he went back to the microphone. "Rocco, start on the east wing. I'm going to start sweeping the other end of the villa with time transcender rays."

He felt more confident when he thought of all the weapons and other defenses concealed in his villa. He casually flipped on the time transcender ray on the first floor, but stopped with renewed alarm when he saw a flashing red light by the switch for the second floor raygun assembly. He switched his viewscreens to the rooms immediately around where the assembly was housed. On one screen, he saw Vincent, his second floor sniper, slumped to the ground, unconscious by an open window. He cursed himself for not having watched her more closely with the camera outside the front door while he was busy making last-moment preparations for Medusa. Obviously, she had gone straight after Vincent and entered the villa that way, leaving a programmed hologram to be escorted in, in her stead.

On the next viewscreen was Medusa herself. This one showed the main hallway. The ceiling track was already open and the time transcender raygun exposed. And there stood Medusa, her living hair wrapped around the raygun and dismantling it. She glanced over to the camera and smiled.

Things were not going well at all. Medusa was much too close now to the stairs to the third floor and Nefaria's third-floor control room. The time transcender ray was his last defense before the stairs. He activated the electrified handrails in the staircase, doubtful that he could be lucky enough for this to stop her now. "Rocco, take every man to the second floor main hallway now!" he yelled into the microphone. He glanced to the exit. Outside this room was a corridor and, at the end of the corridor, a door to the small hangar where his one-man helicopter was waiting. It was starting to look like the time to make a fighting withdrawal, he thought as he hit two more buttons. The first button activated the secondary control panel in the hangar room and the second button caused a panel to pop open on the side of the console and a Beretta Model 93R machine pistol popped out of it. He grabbed it as he stood, paused to brush the white-streaked hair from his eyes and wipe some sweat from his wrinkled brow, and raced for the door.

Medusa could hear the sound of men rushing towards her in the hallway below, but she smiled when she also heard the time transcender ray – which she had not dismantled, but only set on delay – whirled into action and ran down its track through the second floor, bathing Nefaria's goons in the paralyzing glow that had been meant for her. Her greatest weapon was understanding how Nefaria's mind worked and her intuition told her that the metal rails in the staircase where an obvious trap. Just in case the stairs were trapped as well, she willed her hair to expand and push out against the walls to either side of her. Her tresses punched through the plaster walls like tissue paper, grasped the wooden frame and lead pipework on the other side, and supported her weight as she used her hair to lift her feet off the ground. In this manner she ascended the stairs, one hole-through-the-wall at a time.

Wary that Nefaria had more waiting for her, she let her hair go first around the corner at the top of the stairs, like a red tentacle feeling its way through the air – and was greeted by a hail of bullets from an automatic weapon. Spreading her hair apart, the tentacle-like tress became a thousand targets a hairsbreadth in width. The hail of bullets slowed in its intensity, with brief moments of silence interspersed between shots until there was nothing but silence. Medusa frowned, trying to guess if the way was safe. Unwilling to put even her hair back at risk, she pulled the electro-ray disc from her belt, held it facing the top of the stairs, and pressed a button. Her preprogrammed holographic doppleganger flickered into existence and began walking forward. Nothing happened. Then Medusa heard the whine of an engine starting up and realized she had delayed too long. She turned off the electro-ray disc as she tucked it back into her belt leaped into the corridor, and sprinted down the length of it. She passed an open door on her right, as the room looked small and empty. The noise, growing in intensity as she ran, was clearly coming from a second open doorway at the end of the hall. Her hair was billowing out on all sides as she ran. Her gloved hand caught the door sill and she took her first glimpse around into the room – and then turn and ran back as the grenade hit the door.

The grenade, thrown from within the room, bounced into the hallway and clattered to the ground at least five feet behind Medusa as she ran away from it. Behind her, she tensed her hair and braced for impact. Her preparations kept her alive as the grenade exploded behind her, ripped through the hallway, and tossed shrapnel into her hair. Her hair caught the shrapnel and absorbed most of the force of the explosion, but she was still cut up and thrown to the floor. Her head rang and her vision blurred. She heard more noises coming from the room behind her, but it was all distorted, like hearing underwater.

And then Black Bolt walked up to her. He came from the end of the corridor at the top of the stairs, walking with the regal bearing Medusa could not possibly imagine him walking without. His face, even mostly concealed behind his royal mask, should have been handsome and attractive to her, but instead his scowl looked ugly and fearful. She knew it was not Nefaria who made him scowl, either.

"My love!" Medusa tried to cry out, but the words were hard to force out of her mouth. "Don't look at me like that! I'm doing this for you! So you can have a queen by your side who will bring you no shame! Please, just give me a little more time. Time to set things right."

As Medusa knelt on the floor, she felt water falling on her and looked up to see the villa's automatic sprinklers had activated. When she looked back to Black Bolt, he had disappeared. Her head felt clearer and she was aware that she was holding the electro-ray disc again. Had the explosion injured her and made her hallucinate? Or had she unconsciously activated his holographic image? She would never know the answer to that, but she did know that Nefaria was still loose. She rose to her feet, waited for a moment's dizziness to pass, and turned back to the charred and smoking corner of the hallway. She spread out her hair above her like an umbrella to keep the water from drenching the rest of her.

From the brief glimpse she had of the room's interior, she knew about the helicopter. She had not divined how it would exit the room, but she quickly learned that, in her absence, the outer wall of the room had slid open like a garage door. Stepping into the hangar, she could hear the roaring whine of the helicopter somewhere nearby outside. She crossed the room and stepped in front of the doorway open to the clear blue sky outside - or it was until the mini-helicopter dropped back into view, with Count Nefaria at the control stick.

"I don't know if that's the real you or not, Medusa," Nefaria's voice crackled over a loudspeaker in the room, "but I suspect you're close by."

Medusa looked around, just in case, but she was fairly sure the real Nefaria was the one she saw piloting the helicopter.

"I've always loved this villa," Nefaria said with a sigh. "It will be a shame to lose it, but buildings are easier to repair than reputations, are they not?" With that, the transmission from the helicopter ended because Nefaria was busy firing the payload of the copter's under-mounted, multiple rocket launcher straight at the hangar.

Rather than dodge, Medusa made a running leap out the window straight towards the oncoming salvo of rockets. Her hair spread out in thick curls. As each rocket approached her, she snared it with her curls and pushed it towards the ground. She was trading both their momentum and altitude for hers and she was climbing forward and upward with each rocket she pulled down. She was soon out of rockets, but she lashed out her hair like a whip as far as it could reach and it wrapped around the closer runner of the helicopter.

"Oh no," Count Nefaria said.

Medusa swayed back and forth as Nefaria banked the copter first one way and then the other, trying to shake her loose, but in a moment Medusa's hair had pulled her up within arm's reach of the runner. There was no look of satisfaction on her face. She was soaking wet, hurt all over, and raging with anger. She climbed up the side of the copter, anchored to it by her hair, as it tilted hard to the right in one last vain effort to shake her loose. She willed some of her hair that was not anchoring her into a shape like a crude fist and used it to punch right through the window of the copter.

Nefaria, cut on his face by broken glass, kept one hand on the control stick and kept the copter circling around the column of black smoke that rose up from all those rockets. With his other hand he took aim with his machine pistol, "I'll kill you, you-" he screeched. He spat his words like a wild man; gone was all trace of his veneer of sophistication. But before he could utter another word or pull the trigger, wet strands of hair lashed across his face like a cat o' nine tails and more hair snared around his gun hand and jerked him off his aim.

Medusa forced the locked door open with her strong right arm and stole into the tiny cabin. More of her hair snaked forward, grappled with Nefaria's gun hand, and pinned it to the opposite window of the cabin.

Nefaria himself was half-buried in Medusa's red hair, helpless, but still managed to compose himself enough to say with some of his old smoothness, "You think I don't know what you're after? What this is really all about? You hero-types all make me sick because you pretend to be so altruistic, but you're really just doing this for yourself. You want to bring me down to make you feel better. Well, I'll bring us down for you!" he said and he mustered his strength to lunge into the control stick.

The helicopter took a nose dive. Medusa was thrown off-balance and had to catch herself. Nefaria used the diversion to recover his gun hand and swung the machine pistol towards Medusa again. Medusa had maybe ten strands of hair left around that arm. It was enough to overpower him. She pushed his arm up as he fired and bullets ripped through the roof of the cabin. One bullet ricocheted off the propeller blades and came back into the cabin. Ir ricocheted some more before it went through the back of Nefaria's chair. Nefaria froze up with an ugly stare stuck on his face. Medusa glanced out the windshield and saw the ground coming up much too fast. Less than a second before the copter struck the ground, Medusa threw herself through the open doorway and, in midair, wrapped her hair all around her body like a cocoon. The big red ball of hair bounced and rolled at a horrible speed down the hill from where the copter crashed. Inside, Medusa could only feel the shocks and the bruising, and hear the explosion from the helicopter only muffled through her thick hair, but saw nothing of the crash or Uberto and the rest of Nefaria's goons she unknowingly bowled right through and scattered in her wake.

Finally, she came to a stop at the fence around the estate. She tensed her hair, drew it in shorter, and let it flow behind her once more. She had cut a swath through the vineyards straight out to the fence. Looking up at the villa on the hill, she could see the whole wing of it that housed the open hangar was belching smoke and fire like a stone dragon. A smaller column of smoke and flame was rising from behind the hill, where she could only presume Count Nefaria had paid the ultimate price for his crimes.

Medusa grabbed hold of the fence, leaning on it for strength, for what strength she still had in her she reserved for holding up her head high. "You never saw the real me," she said defiantly as her last words to Count Nefaria.

_NEXT: Medusa still has issues to work out before she returns to the rest of the Inhumans – like who is trying to kill her next! Find out next month in "You or Me."_


	2. Chapter 2

"You or Me"

When she stared off into space, it was Attilan that she saw. In her mind, the bright, sleek towers rose up in front of her and touched the sky. Some of her fellow Inhumans soared under the clouds, including one she was sure was her beloved Black Bolt. But it was not Attilan. When she refocused her eyes on the world around her, she saw the old masonry and quaint storefronts across from the restaurant where she sat by a front window. And the shapes in the sky were only birds.

Rome, Italy. June 1971.

It was not so bad. Medusa liked Rome. She liked the St. Regis Grand Hotel and the restaurant, Vivendo, that she was in now. The plush furniture and drapes over the windows made it look like a big living room full of tables. The sun-baked street outside was warm, but the ceiling fans inside kept the restaurant cool and circulated delicious smells from the kitchen. The wine in her glass was chilled and dry. On her plate was salt cod mousse with chicory on a bed of polenta, only half-eaten. She was in no hurry. There was nothing keeping her in Rome except the rumors that Count Nefaria had survived the helicopter crash last month. His villa had been deserted when she returned to it and no hospital admitted to having admitted him. There seemed to be nothing to do but sit out in the open and continue making herself a target, hoping that if Nefaria was still alive, he would not be able to resist some sort of attack.

The waiting vexed her. Her hair was restless. Medusa wanted to be noticed, but not draw as much attention as she would if she let her hair flow out as long as she could. She glanced from side to side, figured few eyes were on her that moment, and reached back to flip her hair. She relaxed her hair enough for it to grow out another six inches longer than the mid-thigh position she had been holding it.

"_Scusami_!" a woman behind her said in a Mediterranean accent that was hard to place, but the sarcasm behind her excusing herself was unmistakable.

Medusa turned to examine the speaker, a strikingly attractive woman with straight, black hair down to her shoulders that matched the color of her midi skirt and shoes and complimented her white stockings. Medusa knew human fashion well enough to know the dress was a Versace original. This woman was also appraising Medusa with her eyes. Medusa was wearing a printed silk dress with miniskirt and tall boots. The dress was Pucci and probably only cost half as much as the Versace. Medusa was at a disadvantage.

The woman reached into her martini glass and pulled a long red hair out of it. "_Do_ mind where you are flipping your hair, please," the woman said with mock politeness in perfect Italian.

"You will have to excuse my hair," Medusa said back in Italian with a mixture of mock politeness and dry humor. "Sometimes it has a mind of its own. Is your drink ruined? Must I buy you a replacement?"

"If it is ruined, I will simply have that man over by the big fish tank buy me another," the woman said, still looking down her nose at Medusa and not even glancing at the man she mentioned. "I am the Countess Stephanie De la Spirosa and I do not need handouts from someone who cannot manage her own hair."

It it had been an ordinary person saying that, Medusa would have chalked it up to ignorance and quickly forget the comment, but if this woman was really a countess – an aristocrat of lower standing to her own standing in Attilan – talking to her that way, then the thought of it tested Medusa's temper. Medusa stood up. Medusa was tall by human standards and stood three inches taller than the countess, even though the countess' heels were an inch taller than Medusa's heels. Medusa knew she should say nothing, but she had been spoiling for a fight too long while waiting for Nefaria's men to strike. Now Medusa looked down her nose at the countess and gave her a cold stare that made the countess shrink back. "Your insolence is noted, Countess," Medusa said. "What you need more than a stiff drink in the middle of the afternoon is a lesson in manners."

The countess managed a shaky half-smile and tried to bluster to cover her show of weakness. "And who is going to teach me this lesson?" she managed to ask in a voice that did not sound as confident as she would have hoped.

Before Medusa could answer, she heard the sound of glass shattering from the windows, something big flew into the room through the drapes and crashed right into Medusa's table, and the world filled up with screaming.

At least it seemed like screaming at first. It was a horribly loud noise that droned on and made it hard to think or even stand. Medusa saw people falling from their chairs all around, clutching their ears or their stomachs, and the Countess De la Spirosa tumbled over backwards too. Although that was momentarily satisfying, Medusa knew she had to find the source of the ear-splitting sound at once. She looked around, but the very effort of doing so made her head swim. Her sense of vertigo was increasing by the moment, so that the room seemed to be turning sideways as she spotted the object she sought in the wreckage of the nearby table. It looked to be a mini-rocket of some sort – clearly not of Inhuman design, and most likely Russian from the characters written on the shell. Medusa choked back her mounting nausea, reached out with her hair - missed the rocket once as the room seemed to tilt again, and then finally picked it up in her long red locks so she could toss it across the room into the fish tank.

The noise was muted by the water of the fish tank and, although the live seafood inside was not going to live much longer, at least the danger to the humans and herself was passed. The room righted itself and the nausea began to pass. "He's found me," Medusa said. Then she turned to look down at Countess De la Spirosa, kneeling on the floor behind her. What she had just heard from her shocked her as much as the mini-rocket and its sonic attack had.

The countess had just said, "He's found me," at exactly the same moment.

"What?" Medusa asked.

The countess had heard Medusa too. "What?" she echoed.

The restaurant crowd was recovering all around them and a few people with stronger stomachs were on their feet already. Medusa looked for her purse and found it under the wreckage of her table. She reached inside and checked the electro-disc she had used against Nefaria and planned to use to get out of here, but there was a crack in the disc and it refused to turn on when she pressed the button.

Recovering quickly from that setback, Medusa looked back on the countess and saw she was not yet back on her feet. Medusa was not leaving her here until she explained herself. She lifted the countess off her feet with a thick crimson tress and carried her across the room towards the windows.

"Help! Stop! Put me down! Impossible! How are you doing this? My purse!" the countess kept hollering until Medusa wrapped hair around her mouth.

"Quiet, you fool," Medusa said crossly as she pulled back the tattered curtain slightly and looked out into the bright sunlight. The street, _Via Orlando Vittorio Emmanuel_, was half-full of motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians who had stopped in their tracks and were either staring in surprise at the restaurant or up in the sky. There was no sign of anyone with a rocket launcher. "Who did you mean had found you?" Medusa asked without looking at the countess, though she did release her mouth. When no answer came immediately, she looked and Medusa saw that the countess looked terrified. "Fine," Medusa said with a sigh. "You'll come with me, then, while I take a look about outside."

Countess De la Spirosa protested to no avail because Medusa had hair wrapped around her and pinning her arms to her side. Medusa took them through the exit that led straight to the street. The traffic outside the hotel was moving again, with only a few curious onlookers still gawking at Medusa as she walked out with the countess in tow. Some of the pedestrians had been looking up earlier, so Medusa looked up too. The sky looked clear. The sun was shining bright...no, there was something in the sky in front of the sun. Medusa shielded her eyes with her hand, but could not make out what it was. Then she noticed that something white was dropping out of the sky under the flying object that mysteriously hid in front of the sun – and it only took her a moment to realize what it was.

"Another missile!" Medusa said. "Run!" She let go of the countess and started to run, but thought better of it and ensnared her in a lock of hair again as the countess tried to run back into the restaurant. "No, not that way!" Medusa scolded her. "Come!" Medusa commanded as she dragged the countess along.

The missile had dropped out of the sky and was starting to level out as it came within range of the rooftops. Medusa glanced back as they ran down the sidewalk and could see it was altering its trajectory to home in on either her or the countess. It was another small rocket, like the first. Medusa looked around and tried to strategize. Cover was going to be useless if the rocket carried another hypersonic payload. If they ducked into a building, as the countess had tried to do, they would be endangering more people again. What she needed to do was take the offensive. Their attacker was well out of reach, but the rocket was barely out of reach and closing fast...

Nearby, a motorist had just pulled over and was running from his car after he spotted the rocket. It was a small 1970 Alfa Romeo Junior GT. Medusa let go of the countess so she could use all her hair to wrap around the car, spin it into the air, and then release it like an enormous shot put at the incoming rocket. When the rocket exploded on impact, it exploded like a raincloud, pouring a substance that caused what few people were on the street behind them to scream out.

"Oh no you don't," Medusa said as she kept the countess from escaping again. "Whoever wants one of us seems to want us alive, but the question is, does he want you or me?" Medusa asked. "Now tell me who you meant. Count Nefaria?"

The Countess De la Spirosa's face, which wore a constant display of anxiety and fear since the first rocket strike, turned suddenly to confusion. "Nefaria? No, no, not him! It's..."

"Fine, tell me later," Medusa said again. "We need to be away from here before the next rocket is fired." She glanced back up into the sky and saw they were already too late. A third rocket had been fired and was descending out of the sky – and a fourth rocket behind it. "Move," Medusa commanded as she sprinted in the opposite direction down the sidewalk, practically dragging the countess again behind her.

"Explain –to me –why I'm not –safer without – you," the countess managed to get out as she struggled to keep up. Her high heels were giving her a terrible time before she lost one of her shoes.

"If he's after you and you run away from me, I can't protect you," Medusa said, "and I can't let you go until you tell me what you know."

Up ahead, a young man was swinging his leg over his 1971 Ducati 450 Mark 3 D when he paused to look up into the sky. Medusa used the diversion to snare the man's raised leg with her hair and send him toppling over onto the sidewalk. "Sorry, we need to borrow this," Medusa said as she mounted the motorcycle, her hair pulling the countess on behind her. She pulled the kickstand back, revved the motor, and squealed her back tire as she pulled from the curb.

"It's a man they call the Mad Thinker who might be after me!" the countess cried over the roar of the Ducati.

Medusa did not respond right away, as she was busy weaving around the obstacle of more little cars and mopeds on the road, going over the sidewalk when it was more clear than the street. It was a slow start until the rockets really started to gain on her and then everyone noticed them and started scattering from their path. "Finally!" she cried out as she was able to give the bike its first real burst of speed. The rockets, both within sight, seemed to slow down behind her as she briefly picked up speed almost to theirs.

The countess had never gone 80 km per hour on a motorcycle in city traffic before and was screaming almost as much from that as from the approaching rockets. Unfortunately, Medusa could only get up to that speed in short fits as she waited for a long, straight opening free of traffic. The rockets were gaining fast. "Can we go faster?" the countess screamed.

"We can't shake them or they might hurt bystanders!" Medusa yelled back.

"What? We're not trying to get away from them?"

"We're leading them out of the city where it's safer."

"Where we'll be more exposed targets?"

Medusa did not respond right away again, but this time it was because she was reconsidering their options as she drove. "You're right!" she yelled back to the countess behind her. "I see now we're not being attacked so much as we're being flushed out. Our foe wants to remove us from the city as much as I was trying to get us there. Hold on!"

Luckily, Medusa's hair was still holding onto the countess, as Countess De la Spirosa might have lost her grip and gone flying off the bike as Medusa dropped speed only to 40 for a tight turn into an open plaza. The rockets lost ground to her as they turned in a wider arch, back on trajectory with their target by the time Medusa drove out of the plaza up a side street.

"Not this road!" the countess yelled, recognizing it as _Via Maria _and its destination, the _Piaza del Colosseo, _but Medusa either did not hear over the motorcycle or did not care to argue. This road was in the same business district, but the buildings to either side were a little nicer, a little taller, and proudly displaying the Italian flag from their flagpoles to either side. Up ahead, the Colosseum rose into view over the end of the street.

Even though the street ahead was crowded with more traffic, Medusa saw a straight gap along the right curb and gunned the engine. If the path stayed clear, she had an opening straight across the intersection in the plaza. And at the center of the plaza stood the Colosseum itself.

The path did not stay clear. A car pulled right up to the curb by the intersection. The countess shrieked and buried her face in Medusa's hair. Medusa shot a long tress up into the air and caught a flagpole. Hanging by just her hair, and still holding the countess to her back, she swung off the bike just before it crashed into the back of the car in front of them. It smashed into the car with such force that the car was pushed forward into traffic and side-swiped another car in the intersection. The bike, crushed into scrap by the impact, bounced off and over the car. The bike never hit the ground, but flew right into the path of one of the incoming rockets. Whether the rocket had a nonlethal payload or not was irrelevant once it collided with the bike's fuel tank and they both went up in the biggest explosion yet, raining fiery debris down onto the cars below. The second rocket, coming into the plaza a little wider, struck a pillar Medusa had just missed by inches and also exploded.

Medusa, for her part, had used her forward momentum to swing off the flagpole, flip over the cross-street circling the plaza, and used her hair to cushion the fall for her and the countess as they hit the pavement of the plaza and tumbled, scraped and bruised, to the very entrance of the Colosseum. When they stopped, Medusa pulled her hair back from around them and staggered to her feet. Her hair was shortened to calf-length, well past the length of her dress. The countess had lost both her shoes and was only know rising to her stocking-covered knees.

"What have you done?" the countess asked in a shaky, frightened voice.

"I've chosen my battlefield," Medusa said calmly.

"But the Colosseum..." the countess continued as she struggled to her feet, "it is a historic landmark – a national treasure! You cannot battle here."

A roaring sound was growing in intensity from the center of the Colosseum, like a much bigger rocket touching down inside. Tourists started pouring out of the ruins from its fiery approach all around Medusa and the countess. Medusa spoke loudly, to make sure the countess would hear over the chaotic din. "This might be your history, but my people were building with glass and steel when your ancestors were stacking stone blocks." With that, Medusa strode into the ancient arena, the fleeing tourists parting before her.

The Countess De la Spirosa was torn between the urge to flee and a morbid curiosity to see what would happen to her would-be rescuer who spoke so mysteriously of her heritage. She could see from her vantage point enough of the inside of the arena to see something very large, metallic, and green had landed there.

Medusa stood her ground as the giant missile made a slow vertical landing on the arena floor before her. It stood almost 10 meters tall and was shaped, not like a rocket, but like a man. The rockets beneath its feet shut off as it touched down and enormous, metal-shod feet clanged against the pavement and the sound echoed through the open-air structure. Medusa and the surrounding ruins reflected green in its shiny surface. Medusa looked up from the knee of the giant figure that she faced and eyed warily the round-barreled rocket launcher held in one "hand" as if it were a handgun. Only half of its rockets had been fired. She looked up further to the figure's "face" far above, staring back down with only two blazing lights where eyes would be.

The shape and appearance of the giant, powered battle armor was familiar even to an Inhuman from its televised encounters with Iron Man of years past. It was the Titanium Man.

Medusa's hair stretched and flowed, her tresses writhing like large snakes around her. Though she could not match the Titanium Man for size, she too would make herself as intimidating in appearance as possible. Yet, intimidated or not, the Titanium Man just stood there silently, the encounter apparently a stand-off as soon as it had begun. For, though Medusa was privy to none of it, inside the battle armor, the Titanium Man was far from silent.

* * *

"_Nyet_!" a voice broadcast over radio shouted angrily in Russian. "Again, you have no authority to engage the target in the heart of Rome! You are creating an international incident! Comrade Bullski, do you read?"

Boris Bullski, the Siberian Commissar for whom the Titanium Man armor had been built, opened the radio channel with a flip of a switch by the little finger of his left hand. He was virtually entombed in the giant armor, surrounded by its controls on all sides and having only enough mobility in his seat and harness to reach them all. "_Dah_, comrades," Bullski's deep voice rumbled. "I read your simpering cowardice. Your proximity to the decadent West has poisoned you and made you weak. She is as good as in my grasp, and you would have me walk away without our prize?"

"There are less direct ways and there will be better opportunities," the other voice on the radio said. "Comrade – if you fail to obey orders, there will be no place in our organization for you."

* * *

The silent stand-off stretched into seconds in length. Medusa took a step toward the colossal Titanium Man. The countess, who had still not decided to flee, crouched behind cover and watched cautiously. Suddenly, the servos in the Titanium Man's large right arm whirred to life and it moved, lowering the rocket launcher.

A deep voice , thick with Russian accent, echoed with a metallic ring as it was broadcast from inside the giant suit of armor. "I leave you this time, but make no mistake - I will be back." With that, the rockets beneath the giant "feet" roared to life again. Medusa took two steps back from the heat of the blast and only watched as the tons of metal before her slipped loose from gravity's embrace and rose into the air.

As the Titanium Man became a more distant threat with each passing second, Medusa dared a glance behind her and spotted the countess, mostly hidden behind a pillar, but still present. Had the Titanium Man known she was there too? Was Medusa the one he was threatening, or the countess? As the countess stared back at her, Medusa realized the same questions were going through her mind as well. And there would could be no answers for now.

NEXT: Medusa and Stephanie De la Spirosa go hunting for clues, find more danger, and recruit more of the Inhumans! Watch the mystery unfold in "Frenzy in Florence!"


	3. Chapter 3

"Frenzy in Florence"

July 1971. Florence, Italy.

There were 24 houses along the west side of _Via Porta Rossa_, but only one had a plaque on the door specifying the interior as the home and medical office of one Dr. Bastiani. There was nothing about the exterior of the dwelling and, indeed, scarcely little on the inside that would have suggested to even his closest neighbors that Medusa would come here, not once, but twice.

It was 7 o'clock on a Tuesday night when Medusa made her second visit. Her black mask and tight, purple bodysuit would look familiar to anyone following her professional career as a member of the Frightful Four or, since her reclamation, an amateur crimefighter here in Italy – though today the bodysuit was modified to have short sleeves. Regardless of what she would have chosen to wear, she was immediately recognizable by the huge head of flame-red hair that bobbed and swayed behind her like a buoy on a tumultuous ocean.

At Medusa's side and even more likely to be recognized by the casual observer because of her appearance on the cover of every glamor magazine in Europe was Countess Stephanie De la Spirosa. What would have surprised the casual observer more than their obvious acquaintance and shared destination was the fact that the countess was clearly injured. She leaned on Medusa and Medusa's gloved left hand stretched across her back and held a bloody rag to the countess' left shoulder.

Dr. Bastiani, when he answered his door, appeared to be an Italian male in his late 40's, fit, clean-shaven, and with a large head of curly black hair that ran in a circle around his extended forehead. He was half-dressed in formal attire, as if he had planned on going out this evening when he was interrupted. "Princess!" he said after only a moment of being startled. "Please, come in." With a low bow, Dr. Bastiani stepped back into his foyer so the two women could come in.

"Thank you, doctor," Medusa said in Italian. "The countess has a gunshot wound to the shoulder."

"Bring her through here," Dr. Bastiani said. He waved his arm towards the door on the side of the foyer that led directly into his office. "Let me see the wound."

The countess took a quick glance at her bloody shoulder as Medusa took away the rag. She grimaced and looked away again as Dr. Bastiani examined it. "Wait," Countess De la Spirosa said. "So, she really is a princess?"

"Did you think she was just making that up?" Dr. Bastiani asked with a smile as he looked all around the shoulder. "Yes, I suppose that would be more plausible, wouldn't it? I'll clean the wound more to be sure, but I'm not seeing any sign of penetration here. It looks like the bullet just grazed you."

"Grazed?" Medusa echoed angrily. She turned an angry gaze on the countess. "Why, I carried you for a half-mile because you were acting like you were at death's door, you big baby."

"I am not accustomed to being shot in any way! Ow!" the countess shot back just as Dr. Bastiani touched hydrogen peroxide to the wound.

"Who attacked you?" Dr. Bastiani asked as he continued dressing the wound. "Was it our kind or theirs?"

* * *

"Theirs," Medusa said. "We were on the south side of Florence, at the countess' villa..."

One hour earlier.

"My house...my beautiful house..." Countess Stephanie De la Spirosa moaned as she moved from the salon to the family room. "This was my favorite house in Italy too. Look, they even broke my couch! That was my favorite couch!"

Medusa sighed. It had been like this in every room of the house so far. The villa had been meticulously ransacked before they arrived. "Stephanie, I need you to focus," Medusa said. "I've spent the last two weeks capturing Nefaria's men between here and Rome and questioning them, and according to their every story Nefaria is still alive somewhere, but in a coma. So, if he could not have hired the Titanium Man to attack me in Rome, then that means it could have been you he was after. We need to talk about why."

"I told you it could have been the Mad Thinker," Stephanie said.

"Because he hit on you and you rebuffed him?" Medusa said. "And then he built a giant robot that looks like the Titanium Man to attack you? I admit it is remotely possible. I have someone in my family they call mad and he too might do something that insane."

"Then hiding out in my own house from him seems a little insane too, if you ask me."

"We're not supposed to be hiding; you're supposed to be looking," Medusa admonished sternly. "I thought maybe we would find something here, like a letter from a vengeful admirer, but now it looks to me like no one was after you at all, but after something you might have."

"Hmph," went Stephanie as she sulked through a doorway that looked like it went into the kitchen.

"Are you getting a snack?" Medusa asked as she followed her into what was indeed the kitchen. This room had been at least partially ransacked too.

"No, I am checking my mail like you said to do," Stephanie answered brusquely as she bent over to open the oven.

"You keep your mail in the oven?"

The countess straightened up and gave Medusa a defiant glare. "Do I look like I cook?"

Medusa pushed Stephanie aside and saw a stack of mail sitting in the cold oven. As she went through it, she found most of it was junk mail, but a good amount of it was business-related, with reputable return addresses. Some of it looked to be fan mail and those were suspect until Medusa came across one large envelope, battered but padded, with no return address that really looked suspicious. "What's in this?" she asked, handing it to the countess.

"I don't know..." the countess said as she opened it. The first thing she pulled out was an old key that looked like it was made of bronze, green from age. She put it in Medusa's gloved hand. Then the countess pulled out a letter and started reading it. "This is in Serbo-Croatian..." she said. "My mother's family is Serbian. The Solokevich's. Oh..." Her brow furrowed as she read further.

Outside, they could hear the "whoop-whoop" of an emergency siren.

Stephanie looked up from the letter. "The police! Someone must have seen whoever did this to my house and called them!" And she hurriedly stuffed the letter back into the envelope as she ran out of the kitchen.

"Odd, though, that the siren came from right outside the house..." Medusa said as she walked after her. "How long have they been out there?" Medusa kept following, slipping the key into her glove for safe keeping. They moved back into the family room and down the hall that, past the stairs to the second floor, led to the front of the villa. Medusa caught the flashes of reflected red lights coming from front-facing windows. Medusa grew wary. Beyond the fact that her black mask made her look like she was dressed like a burglar, Medusa's instincts told her there was something suspiciously wrong with the timing of their appearance.

Stephanie picked up her pace as she reached the foyer, arriving just as they could both hear the doorbell.

"Wait..." Medusa said, her hair snaking forward in a long, thick lock to swirl around the countess' arm, but Medusa hesitated and the countess answered the door.

Three police officers were standing under the front portico. There were four cars belonging to the Florence Police Force parked in a row out front, and more officers just standing around in front of the house. "_Scusi_, _Contessa_," the officer standing in front said, "but we heard there was a disturbance. May we come in?"

Before Medusa could say anything else, Stephanie had already told them to come in and was spilling the whole story about what had happened in random order.

"That envelope in-a your hand," the officer said, interrupting, "is that-a something the burglars would have wanted? Please hand it over."

Medusa shouted, "Don't give it to them!"

"I said, please hand it over," the officer repeated more forcefully, as all three officers went for their holstered pistols.

Medusa let her hair flow as long as it could and it billowed out in long tresses that stretched half across the room. With one tress, she picked up a heavy wooden stand and threw it into the lead officer with enough force to knock him back into the other two just as they were taking aim with their guns. With another tress, Medusa scooped up the countess and flung her gently towards the rear exit of the room. "Run to the back door, Stephanie! Now!" she yelled. The rest of her hair whipped in wide circles around the room like a windstorm, keeping the officers off-balance.

Stephanie ran down the hallway, through the family room, and unlocked the door that led to the back porch. No sooner was she through the door, though, when she realized there were men waiting on the porch. Two of them converged on her quickly and grappled her with strong, rough hands.

"_Contessa_, you must-a come with us," one of them said, sounding more polite than his actions indicated.

Stephanie was still not sure if these were real police officers or not. At least these two kept their guns holstered. They had almost walked her to the corner of the house and around to the south side when twin locks of red hair snaked down from above, jerked the two men back, and bashed their heads together. As they fell, Stephanie looked up and was relieved to see Medusa lowering herself by her hair from an upstairs window.

"That's five down, but there's still three more outside," Medusa said as she bent down to examine Stephanie's erstwhile captors.

"Are they imposters?" Stephanie asked.

"I don't know. The uniforms and badges look real. I'm glad they did not get the envelope from you. Let's get it as far from here as possible and you can tell me what it says."

The countess' villa was on a relatively modest six-acre plot and, on the east side of that plot, a copse of huge Italian cypress trees grew up to the edge of the property. Light was coming from the villa and the police cars on the west side of it, but the east side of the plot was almost as dark as pitch and they would quickly become lost from sight there. Or at least that was the plan. As they came up to the first of the trees, though, twin searchlights beamed down on them from above – searchlights that glared down like blazing eyes from the top of a monstrous silhouette, almost as tall as the trees.

The countess looked up and screamed.

"The Titanium Man," Medusa said.

"Pleased to be meeting you again, _Contessa_," the same voice as before spoke from the giant battle armor, "and your very lovely bodyguard. I presume you know 'vhat I 'vant?"

"Here! Just take it!" the Countess screamed as she threw the envelope against the metal leg of the giant robot.

Behind the two women, four of the policemen, including one that had recovered from the foyer, had seen the light and heard the scream and came running. Luckily, they seemed just as startled at the sight of the Titanium Man as Stephanie had been. While they screamed in alarm, they lifted their pistols and fired wildly at the giant, green, metal man. The ricochets flew even more wild.

"Ohhoowww!" Stephanie howled as she seemed to be struck by one in the shoulder.

Medusa quickly caught her as Stephanie fell back and, while the Titanium Man was distracted by the police, she ran off into the trees and out of sight.

* * *

The present.

"...And after that, we came straight here," Medusa said, finishing her tale for Dr. Bastiani.

"That is most strange," Dr. Bastiani said, scratching his chin.

"Wait," Stephanie said. "What is this talk of 'our kind or theirs' and Medusa's claims about her 'people'?"

Dr. Bastiani looked to Medusa and said nothing until she nodded. "We call ourselves the Tilanese, but our people have been called 'Inhumans' for so long we have also taken that name as our own. Our civilization is older than the Egyptians, the Sumerians, and Atlanteans."

"But you look human to me," Stephanie said, "except for Medusa's hair."

"We are as close to humans as the Neanderthals were. None of us are born, though, with a special gift like the Princess Medusa's living hair. Genetically pure Inhumans have the right to give selective mutations to their children."

"And you are not...?"

"A genetically pure Inhuman? If I was, I might ask for a cure for baldness," he said, smiling and pointing to his extended forehead. "No, our people keep strict control over the population of pure Inhumans. If an Inhuman wishes to have more children past their legal limit...well, that has led some Inhumans to go out and have dalliances with humans. If there is a product of that union, the child cannot live in the Great Refuge, but must go out into the human world. So, you see, I am actually as much one of your people as I am of her highness'."

"Dr. Bastiani is one of thousands of people around the world who have some Inhuman blood in them," Medusa added. "The Great Refuge is our secret city where none but pure Inhumans may live, but the impure still have some rights to visit and communicate with the Refuge. That was why I had already paid a visit here two weeks ago."

"We call it the Whispering Chain," Dr. Bastiani said, clearly enjoying the chance to talk about all this. "When Medusa needed to send word back to the Great Refuge, she contacted me. I contacted the next closest Inhuman to the Refuge and he, in turn, contacted the next one down the line. By keeping our communications as low-tech as possible, we avoid them being discovered by mankind and your modern spying capabilities."

"Has there been word back yet?" Medusa interrupted.

"Patience, your highness. I am sure, when your message reaches the Refuge, a response will come quickly. In the meantime, I have cleaned the _contessa_'s wound. What I can do for you next is offer you some refreshments."

"Is it safe here?" Stephanie asked, looking with worried eyes at Medusa.

"You are as safe here as anywhere in Florence," Dr. Bastiani said with a shrug.

"I honestly don't know if we lost the Titanium Man or not," Medusa said. "If not, I hope I have not brought you in harm's way, Doctor."

* * *

Boris Bullski watched the monitor in front of him. Switched to infrared imaging, he was able to follow the movement of the three people in the house. His microphone picked up the sound of them talking, but not what was being said. If he was allowed any closer he might have heard everything, but his new comrades were still stalling. Every hour he had made a new call – really just long rants now - to headquarters. When he was the most feared commissar in all Siberia no one would have dared keep him waiting. Now, at headquarters, they were pretending to be too busy for his calls. Now he waited on _them_. And now he suffered the humiliation of being used for surveillance. All for having lost face in his two failed and very public battles with Iron Man.

"We read you, comrade," a voice finally said on the open channel in Serbo-Croatian.

"'Vhere is my Russian translator?" Boris roared in the same tongue. "You know my Serbo-Croatian is not so good."

"He is busy, but will be back soon," the voice said. "Do you have something new to report?"

"I am having them both in my sights now," Boris said. "I at range to attack with thirteen different 'veapon systems."

"You are advised to hold, comrade. The contents of the envelope are still being evaluated. We might not need the countess any longer."

"The bodyguard is crafty. She would not be letting the envelope go if they had not kept the most important contents. And I 'vould have the bodyguard already if the Italians had not interfered."

"A miscommunication, comrade. The Italians were not told of your involvement. If we can resolve this situation using only the pro-Communist faction in their police, without your direct involvement, so much the better."

"Or they could be making a mess of everything," Boris said.

"Just follow your instructions, comrade," the voice said, growing more agitated. "Remember, the Titanium Man battle armor is indeed a powerful weapon, but after this, it shall not be our only one."

At that, Boris noticed various instruments around him start to register an enormous energy surge within the house. On the monitor, he could see bright light through the windows of the house. "Or perhaps, comrade, a third 'veapon is coming into play..."

* * *

Medusa, Stephanie, and Dr. Bastiani had left his office for his living quarters on the others side of the house when it happened. He was pouring wine for them in the living room when a bright flash of light flooded the room.

"The Titanium Man? Again?" Stephanie asked, jumping up with fright.

"No," Medusa said, smiling. "I recognize the energy filling the room. Help has arrived!"

The nimbus of energy seemed to flow through everything around them without harming anything. The center of this energy burst was the largest open space in the living room. As everyone shielded their eyes and looked into that space, they could see two shapes materialize out of thin air. One was enormous, grotesquely misshapen, but as its features became clearer, it looked to be a giant mastiff hound with enormous drooping jowls and, inexplicably, antennae growing out of its forehead. The other was a man, lithe, muscular, wearing a tall hat and carrying some sort of staff-like object in his hand.

"Behold!" Medusa proudly announced. "Karnak of the Royal Fam-" but her words caught in her throat when she recognized the item Karnak held and fear clutched at her heart.

* * *

NEXT: Medusa finally shares the stage with Karnak and Lockjaw and our cast practically triples in size! How do you celebrate that, Inhumans-style? You sneak into Yugoslavia and throw down with the Titanium Man, that's how! Do not miss the conclusive battle in, "Answers Writ in Titanium!"


	4. Chapter 4

"Answers Writ in Titanium"

August 1971. Kusturica, Yugoslavia.

Even though the Village of Kusturica was on the outskirts of the city of Totivo Uzice, it was still a lonely stretch of road. North of the village was the Memorial Cemetery and not much of anything between that and the Petrovaradin military base some 90 km away.

The truck coming down the road was a military vehicle. The soldiers in the back of the truck leaned way out to look and one whistled at the redhead in the purple short-sleeved top, short pants, and long gloves and boots; and at the woman next to her in a pastel blue blouse and blue jeans, her hair concealed under a scarf and her face concealed behind big sunglasses. They were both standing on either side of a big haystack. The one wearing the sunglasses lit a cigarette and the redhead just looked around, as if oblivious to the attention from the soldiers. The truck continued on, heading into town.

"They're far enough," Karnak said a few seconds later as he stepped out from behind the "haystack." Lockjaw, the giant mastiff-like Inhuman, began to shake off the hay until it was flying everywhere.

Karnak's new uniform still made Medusa shudder. The tall, cylindrical hat, the long shirt that came down past his belt with the stiff, upwards-curved shoulders and loose sleeves, the white scarf, and the flared gauntlets – Karnak had changed the color scheme from red and white to his favorite green and white, but it was in all other respects the uniform of a Seeker. The staff-like universal control rod in his hands was just like the one the last Seeker had used all those years he hunted the royal family of Attilan while in exile.

"Our goal is in sight down the road," Karnak continued. "I don't know why we needed further subtlety."

Medusa was putting her black mask back on. "We don't need another incident like at the border," she said. "There are some things even the weapon of a Seeker won't be able to handle."

Karnak sighed at the obvious slight, a continuance of an argument running several weeks now. "I am still Karnak," he said as if repeating it. "This uniform and weapon do not make me my predecessor. I coveted the office long before he occupied it and it was only natural for Black Bolt to finally appoint me. Besides, I offered to come with and help, did I not? Though I do not understand why you chose to take on this quest rather than return to the Great Refuge with Lockjaw and me."

Countess Stephanie De la Spirosa did not get involved in the argument. She was making funny faces in front of Lockjaw's enormous face, saying in a funny voice, "Who's a good doggie? You're a good doggie! Yes!"

"I became involved in all this by mistake, but I still became involved," Medusa said. "The letter Stephanie found said she was needed here to open something that once belonged to her mother's family. In town, we found the Solokevich family lawyer in hiding. The rest of the Solokevich's are dead or arrested, so there is no one else but Stephanie to open the family mausoleum in the cemetery."

"You told me all this already," Karnak said, attaching the propulsion platform to the bottom of the universal control rod. "And you think that anything the Titanium Man wants out of that mausoleum should not be let in his hands. So be it. We complete the task and then we can be done with this place." With that, he stepped onto the tiny platform, turned a knob on the handle at the other end of the universal control rod, and it hovered into the air. After another turn of the knob, Karnak was flying quickly down the road, leaving the rest to catch up.

There was no fence around the Memorial Cemetery; the gravestones went right up to the edge of the road. Further back from the road were tombs and mausoleums, larger and more ornate the further back they went, until they reached the forested hills on the western horizon. Above the forested hills, the evening sun hung low in the sky, though it was not quite twilight yet.

"My mother's family should have the largest mausoleum," Stephanie said, and they all set about looking for it.

The Solokevich Family Mausoleum turned out to be the third largest in the cemetery. Stephanie had her arms folded across her chest and was visibly sulking. The doors to the mausoleum were ajar and the chains and padlock that once held them closed were laying in the grass nearby.

"Once again someone has beaten us to the goal," Medusa said. "Let us hope they missed what they were after again, like the letter at the villa."

The interior of the mausoleum quickly dispelled Medusa's hopes. Sarcophagi had been tipped over out of their niches, their skeletal contents spilling out onto the middle of the floor in a gut-wrenching display of sacrilege.

"Ghastly," Karnak said, while Medusa and Stephanie were initially speechless.

Stephanie watched as Karnak and Medusa examined one of the walls and finally said, "So...that's it? We came all this way for nothing?"

"There's still this door to try," Medusa said.

"What door?" Stephanie asked.

Medusa turned to look back at Stephanie and then back to Karnak, who had missed the comment because he did not speak Italian as the women were doing. After Medusa translated, then Karnak took his first real interested look at Stephanie since they met. "Curious," Karnak said. He squeezed a nob on the universal control rod and one end lit up like a bright light-bulb. "Have her take another look."

After Medusa asked Stephanie to try looking closer, Stephanie took off her sunglasses and crept towards the wall, squinting hard and looking like she was concentrating. "Well..." she said, "I guess I kind of see the outline of a door."

"We see the door very clearly," Medusa told Stephanie. To Karnak she said, "She can barely see the door. What does that mean?"

"The answers must wait on the other side," Karnak said and he touched the door. Inside the door, a bolt turned and the door unlocked. With a push, it opened easily to a narrow staircase heading down. Karnak took the lead, followed by Medusa, and Stephanie bringing up the rear. Lockjaw sat in the middle of the mausoleum, facing the front door, and panting.

At the bottom of the stairs was a small room and, in the middle of the room, was a stone pedestal. Sitting on the pedestal was a box that also seemed to be carved from stone, but also carved with some sort of writing. It had no hinges and no obvious lid. Karnak moved closer to the pedestal and, as he tried to recognize the writing, he exclaimed something Medusa never expected to hear. "By Randac! Medusa, the writing on this box is in Old Tilanese!"

Medusa quickly explained Karnak's alarm to Stephanie, explaining Old Tilanese was the written language of the Inhumans from millennia ago. Then she said to Karnak, "Are you sure? Not even I know how to read Old Tilanese."

"I have read enough of it in the Tower of Wisdom to recognize it," Karnak said, not taking his eyes off the box, "but its meaning is a riddle to me. As is how this human's family came into possession of it."

Medusa looked back and forth between Karnak and Stephanie for a moment before a mental puzzle piece clicked into place for her. "What if..." she said, giving voice to her intuition, "Stephanie's ancestors were part Inhuman? That would explain why they would have kept this in the family."

Medusa was translating for an astonished Stephanie when they heard Lockjaw's loud bark from above.

"We need to take this with us until we have reasoned this out," Karnak said, pointing the rod at the box. "I can place it in an anti-gravity field..."

"No need," Medusa said, picking up the box with her hair. She passed Stephanie, standing still as a statue with her hands over her mouth as if she were trying to stifle a scream, on her way back up the stairs.

Karnak paused long enough to snap his fingers in front of Stephanie's face and snapped her out of her thoughts.

Only then did Stephanie realize their only light source was leaving the secret, spooky room. As she rushed to follow, she mumbled to herself, "Could it be true...?"

Medusa was the first to Lockjaw's side as the massive Inhuman let out one more roaring bark and then simply growled.

"Someone's out there," Medusa said to both Karnak and Stephanie in their respective languages.

Karnak answered by stepping outside.

Medusa, frustrated with Karnak's more aggressive personality, blew hair out of her face before turning back to Stephanie and warning her to stay behind Lockjaw.

The sky outside was tinged with purple and orange, but the two-story figure standing in the middle of the cemetery was a familiar shade of green. "Good evening," the Titanium Man said in Italian, broadcast from inside the enormous battle suit with a metallic ring to it. "Please to be handing over 'vhatever you found in the Countess' family tomb."

"Lockjaw, take us out of here," Medusa said in Tilanese.

"No!" Karnak shouted, waving behind him to attract Lockjaw's attention. "This robot or whatever it is has been hounding Medusa for months. Let's find out why."

Medusa was considerably unenthusiastic about this plan, but she reluctantly deferred to Karnak's wisdom and stepped forward with the box in hand. Speaking again in Italian, Medusa said loudly to the Titanium Man, "Before we do anything, tell us why this is so important to you."

"No, I have a better plan," the Titanium Man said. "I 'vill be killing all three of you and your giant dog and simply take 'vhat I 'vant 'vhen I am done." As he spoke his grim threat, a long cable shot out of an oval shape where a belt buckle would be on the giant armored suit's waist.

In the split-second Medusa had to react, she mistakenly assumed the cable was meant to snare the box and used her hair to catch it. For a split-second, she felt the electrical charge from the cable coursing through her body. As she began to wonder how she was still alive, she felt Karnak's hand on her back. Glancing back, she saw he had struck the universal control rod into the ground. Then, sick and shaky from the electricity, she dropped the box and fell to her knees.

"Has he never heard of a lightning rod?" Karnak asked and made a "tsk" sound.

"Ah, my other prize," the Titanium Man said. "I remember its energy signature from Florence." With that, he outstretched his enormous hand.

Karnak could feel the strong tug of magnetism trying to wrench the rod from his hand. As he was lifted off his feet and pulled up toward the hand, he used his own free hand to push a button on the rod. With a noise like a firecracker, a cone of concussive force burst from the end of the rod and tore into the Titanium Man's giant hand. The metal fingers were bent out of shape, revealing the motorized joints beneath. Karnak felt the magnetic tug pulling him through the air vanish and he tucked and rolled as he came back down to the ground.

Medusa struggled to her feet as she watched Karnak land safely. Lockjaw was still staying out of the fight, protecting Stephanie as Karnak had bade him. Karnak was closing in with the Titanium Man, no doubt planning to use the rod's force blast again at point blank range, but bounced back off some invisible barrier. The Titanium Man was bragging about his "impulse rays" in Italian - still oblivious to the fact that Karnak did not know the language. It was pretty clear to Medusa that what he called impulse rays was some sort of repulsor-field technology, which was still very advanced for human science. It was time to end this, she decided, before that giant battle armor was lucky enough to cause Karnak serious harm.

"Lockjaw!" Medusa called out. "I'll guard the girl. Attack!"

A deep, rumbling growl sprang up in the dog-like Inhuman's throat. Having held back only because he was told to, Lockjaw literally sprang at the chance to join the action. He fearlessly charged straight for the Titanium Man – over a half-ton of canine muscle against however many tons of titanium-steel.

Medusa was still betting on Lockjaw, but before Lockjaw could reach the repulsor-field, the Titanium Man fired metal rings from his undamaged forearm. The rings expanded before they reached Lockjaw, so quickly that they encircled even his massive frame. When the rings contracted suddenly, they tripped up Lockjaw and sent him tumbling to a stop in front of the Titanium Man's feet.

Karnak had been fumbling with a dial on the universal control rod until now when he cried, "Aha! I found the frequency that field was operating on. With that gone, let's see how you handle this!" With the press of a stud, the two ends of the rod glowed and crackled with balls of energy.

The Titanium Man seemed to notice Karnak coming at him on his right flank in time, but reacted too slow as Karnak used the rod to pole-vault. As one end touched the ground, it hurled him up into the air with powerful force, as if he were riding a grenade blast. Karnak's ascension crested at the height of the Titanium Man's stomach, where Karnak lashed out with the other glowing end of the rod. The impact smashed four studs on the front of the armor and buckled the metal plating beneath. Striking faster than gravity could pull him back down, Karnak spun the rod around and lashed out with a swing at the Titanium Man's right arm as well. The Titanium Man was raising his right arm to block and took a deep dent for his efforts. He tried to swing the arm fast enough to swat Karnak away, but Karnak jumped on top of the arm and was about to take a third swing when a panel popped open on the arm beneath his feet and threw him off-balance.

"Got you!" the Titanium Man shouted in Russian, no longer caring for his foes to understand him. His left hand had grabbed Karnak and started to crush him.

Lockjaw had just chewed the last of the constricting rings off of him and returned his attention to the Titanium Man. He clomped onto the giant battle armor's leg with his huge maw and began to shake. The Titanium Man began to teeter and totter until he fell over. Karnak was dropped so both hands could brace the giant's fall.

Though Karnak could likely have landed safely, he never had the chance as he landed in Medusa's living hair. "Medusa!" he shouted, though his voice sounded weakened by pain. "Let me go! I'll soon have him begging to give us the answers we need."

Medusa lowered Karnak to the ground, but kept him ensnared in her tresses. "No," she said. "Look at you. Is this Karnak, answering brute force with more brute force? Can't you see you're only escalating the situation? Have you even tried to look for your foe's weakness?"

Karnak looked over at the Titanium Man, rising to his feet, and then down at the ground. "No, I have not. You are right, Medusa. The universal control rod is too powerful and has blinded me to other options. But there is a way to end this fight quickly," he said and he ended his statement by pressing four studs along the length of the rod in sequence and throwing it to the ground in front of the Titanium Man. "Everyone to Lockjaw!" Karnak then shouted. "Lockjaw, get us out of here!"

Medusa paused only long enough to make sure the stone box was once more securely held in her hair. Then she too raced to meet Lockjaw, as Karnak and Stephanie had done.

"You are 'vise to surrender one of your 'veapons," the Titanium Man called out, reverting once more to Italian, "but I 'vant them both. And this disentegrator ray 'vill see to it that you give it to me," he threatened, taking aim with the cannon-like weapon that had been concealed under the plate in his right forearm.

But Lockjaw's antennae were already glowing and, with a happy barking sound, Lockjaw and all his companions touching his sides disappeared before the Titanium Man could fire. And then the Titanium Man had time left to do nothing before the programmed delay ended and a massive electromagnetic surge exploded out of the rod and engulfed much of the cemetery.

The light of the surge, like a lighting flash on the ground, was visible from a mile away where Lockjaw had teleported everyone.

"Every circuit in the rod would have been fused by that surge," Karnak said, "but it is just as well. If I continue as a Seeker at all, let it be as Karnak and not the wielder of such a weapon."

"And all this over some box that belonged to my ancestors," Stephanie said. "Medusa!" she called out in alarm as she looked for the box. "Where is it? You must have dropped it?"

Medusa, surprised herself, spread out her hair before her and looked for the box. "It's impossible that I dropped it! Lockjaw, did you try to bring it with us?"

Everyone looked to the giant Inhuman who shook his head yes.

"Then that means..." Medusa said.

"The box somehow resisted coming with us," Karnak said, finishing her thought. "If we are to have your answers, it seems we must go back for it."

So they did, relying on Lockjaw's amazing power once more to make the trip quickly. Stephanie too came back, as it was quickly decided that it was not safe to leave her alone in case those soldiers from the truck returned. The sensation of teleporting with Lockjaw, so disorienting at first for Stephanie, now felt little worse than riding in a fast elevator.

The trees and grass around the cemetery were mostly burnt black or still smoldering, but at least the heat flash that accompanied the electromagnetic surge had come and gone so quickly that it was not sustaining fires. The Titanium Man was still standing where it had been, but now as still as a statue. Not 15 meters from the giant "statue" was the mysterious stone box.

"Do we have anything to fear from the Titanium Man?" Medusa asked Karnak in Tilanese. She kept a wary eye on their motionless foe, her hair lifted off her shoulders and back so that she could attack or defend herself with it quickly.

"All electrical systems inside your friend there should have overloaded and be inoperable for awhile," Karnak responded. "Still, I would recommend not standing too close."

Stephanie bent over the box and hesitatingly touched it. When nothing happened, she looked up to the others for guidance. "Should we just open it here?"

Medusa translated quickly for Karnak before responding in Italian for Stephanie. "I'm not sure we can open it, or at least not easily. We need to take it somewhere else so Karnak can translate the writing better."

"You still do not know 'vhat prize you have 'von?" an all-too familiar voice broadcast from inside the Titanium Man.

Everyone else jumped, startled, at the question and the chuckle that accompanied it.

"We have at least 24 minutes until my electrical systems restart," the Titanium Man said calmly. "'Vhy not listen to a little history lesson? Five hundred years ago, in the year 1471, the very spot 've are now 'vas the enemy camp of an army of Ottoman Turks besieging the City of Uzice. Prince Lazarus of Rascia's army had been pressed into the city's 'valls and surrounded. A Turkish victory seemed a sure thing. Then, a merchant family in the city presented that very box to the prince. The legends say that, 'vhen the box opened for him, it gave him an unbeatable 'veapon that over'vhelmed and scattered the invaders and freed the city. But so horrible 'vas the 'veapon that the prince ordered for it to be destroyed, the box sealed away, and he himself left for a convent 'vhere he spent years in atonement."

"So that's it," Medusa said. "You want to see if the box held more than one weapon."

"My comrades do," the Titanium Man replied, "but I need no other 'veapons. For even though you guessed correctly that 80% of my 'veapon systems are electronic in nature, fully 20% of them are purely mechanical. And that is all I 'vill require to kill you all," he said as, with a heavy clanking sound, machine gun-housing turrets popped out of the armor's hips and took aim at them.

The chatter of the machine guns was deafening and the flashes from the barrels lit the twilight-shrouded cemetery like giant fireflies. Hundreds of .50 caliber bullets tore up the ground where the Inhumans had been, but were too late. Lockjaw had quickly surmised they were in danger and brushed up against everyone so he could teleport them away. Before the Titanium Man could react, they were all already behind him.

"Quick, Medusa!" Karnak said. "Lift me higher!"

Medusa gave her second cousin a boost up with a long lock of her hair, not even hesitating to assist now that he sounded like his old self again.

"Eh?" the Titanium Man said, realizing too late he had completely missed his chance. He swiveled the turrets around behind him, but he could not see to aim them. Without his electronic surveillance equipment, the armor had huge blind spots. He struggled to turn his battle suit around without power assisting his servos, but it only budged in short fits.

Karnak surveyed the back of the giant armor quickly, breathed in, and closed his eyes. He focused all his energy to the side of his open hand and, with a loud cry, struck it precisely where it needed to go.

Karnak hopped down from the hair that was supporting his weight, but before he hit the ground was pointing back up to where he struck. "Medusa, your hair! The crack!"

Medusa looked up at the Titanium Man's back and saw overlapping plates on the back of the leg, mostly concealed by the "skirt" of the battle armor. It looked to be a protected duct or vent of some sort, but Karnak had just bent one of the plates so it left the duct uncovered in a spot large enough for even a thick lock of hair. Medusa stretched out her hair through the opening and threaded it through every opening she found. It was a long stretch, so she climbed up the back of the leg to get closer. Her hair continued through the battle suit's interior until she came across something leg-shaped – and she gave it a twist.

"Arrgh!" the Titanium Man cried. The broadcast voice still had its metallic ring, but the sound of pain was all too human.

"Shut down your armor entirely," Medusa shouted, "or I will break your leg!"

"N-no! I cannot lose face like that again..." the man inside the Titanium Man said through grit teeth.

"Then you needn't!" Medusa said. "You have no reinforcements here to see that we battled. Tell your superiors that we escaped with the box before you arrived."

Boris Bullski did not answer, but the turrets closed on the hips of the Titanium Man and the whole suit seemed to slump forward a little. And then it was motionless and quiet again.

Medusa let go of the leg and slid down to the ground to rejoin the others. Karnak was holding the stone box with both hands. Stephanie had retrieved the universal control rod.

"A souvenir," Karnak said when Medusa gave him a look about it.

It was a much longer walk out of the cemetery when one was getting accustomed to teleporting and suddenly could not anymore. Stephanie used the burnt-out rod as a walking stick, but everyone's eyes were on the box Karnak held.

"You said the inscription was a riddle," Medusa said at last as they reached the road once more. "What does it say?"

"I could make out 'send from the past' and little else," Karnak said slowly. "But...if I understand it correctly...I think this is some sort of time machine."

NEXT: What is the true meaning of the Box? And who else wants it? Well, he's from the future, and he's known for conquering things...Be here next month when another Inhuman joins our cast for a doozy entitled "The Secret Within!"


	5. Chapter 5

Amazing Adventures of the 1970s: Featuring The Inhumans #5 by Scott Casper

"What Lies Within!"

**September, 2471. Uranus Base 1, Titania.**

No one bothered Ric Roder's gang when they sauntered into the Back Home Cafeteria. No one usually did anything about the Roder Gang unless they did something really awful. They flaunted their illegal cybernetics, wearing them skin graft-style rather than implanted, and openly wore HPPPBs, or High Power Pulse Particle Beam weapons, in old-fashioned leather holsters. Out here, in a frontier colony, the United Planets Peace Keepers did not intervene for such infractions.

The holo-windows of the cafeteria were showing a "Main Street, U.S.A"-type movie, with 21st century cars driving down a street lined with physical storefronts and people walking back and forth in front of the stores. There were some customers physically present in the cafeteria, some of them talking to holographic companions sitting with them. There was a physically present greeter in the cafeteria too, a relic of old-fashioned customer service. The greeter, a middle-aged woman of stocky build named Floa, frowned right away upon seeing them. She had a holographic tattoo of a butterfly dancing on her cheek.

"Lo, Ric," Floa said, trying to smile. "What can I get for you boys?"

"Just a power port, Floa," Ric said as the other four with him gave the other customers intimidating looks and dragged chairs noisily from other tables to one central table. "We brought our own drink machine. Hobbit!" he called out to the one with the metal-studded face who was just sitting down. "Throw it here!"

Hobbit nodded and tossed a black box he had under his arm across the room to Ric, who easily caught it with his two right hands.

"Our drink machine is working just fine, Ric," Floa said.

"Not like this one," Ric said with a prideful smile as he plugged it into a power port on the nearby counter. "Dob tinkered with it and managed to bypass the alcohol limits. Now we can make tequila shots instead of drinking that slosh you call booze."

A pair of gloved hands in the room started clapping slowly.

Angered at the apparent mockery, Ric followed the sound to the man in the blue mask who had not been standing there before. The blue mask was part of a round, purple helmet, which matched the cape, gauntlets, and thigh-high boots he wore. It was a garish outfit, even by Uranus' standards. "What the gop do you think you're clapping about, spacer?" Ric asked.

"I'm clapping because the toughest five men, not affiliated with the Peace Keepers, this side of Saturn, are proud because they can finally try to get drunk," Kang the Conqueror said slowly. "What a pitiful time for men of action to live in when the worst mayhem you can get into is this."

"You got a better idea?" Ric said as he advanced menacingly on Kang, who just stood there looking relaxed and completely unworried.

"Oh, yes I do," Kang said with a grin. "I'd like to hire your 'gang' to go back to 20th century Earth, sink a boat, and steal a box for me."

**September 1971. Adriatic Sea, aboard the **_**Marjan**_**.**

The _Marjan_ was a 1,500 ton cargo ship with a crew of 15, sailing out of Belgrade, Yugoslavia and bound for Rhodes, Greece. And, today, it held three special passengers.

It was a pleasant enough day to be on deck, as Medusa and Karnak were. Medusa had switched to her dark green, full bodysuit while Karnak had insisted on wearing his seeker uniform. The costumes had not bothered the crew as much as the black masks they wore, but after a day everyone was used to their eccentric passengers and ignored them. Even now the two cousins stood, leaning against the rail, looking over the sea, while the crew moved about their tasks oblivious to them. If the crew was curious enough to eavesdrop, they would have understood nothing being said by them in Tilanese. The crew was entirely Yugoslavian, so even had they spoke in English their speech would have been unintelligible to the crew.

"I hope Stephanie is well. I know it was hard for her learning of her family's heritage," Medusa said, interrupting a long silence.

Karnak just looked at her for a moment before responding. "Is that what you were thinking about?" he asked. "I was certain your thoughts were on Black Bolt, waiting for us in Greece."

Medusa looked back at him and smiled. "I have the chills when I think of him being there, but we don't know if he'll be there ahead of us, do we? If he was not delayed by matters in Attilan, Lockjaw could have teleported him here already. Or we could have showed him the box in Yugoslavia before ever boarding this ship."

"Yes, the mystery box that Lockjaw cannot teleport no matter how hard he's tried," Karnak said, still frustrated by the mystery of it. "And our trip, just something to do while we wait until Black Bolt can spare the time for us."

"Hardly an idle waste of our time," Medusa said more cheerily, glancing about the deck and spotting who she sought. "It's given us time to spend with my most elusive cousin, your brother – Triton! Why are you skulking over there in the shadows! Come out with us!"

Slowly, Triton stepped out of the shadow of the cabin. He was clad in a wide-brimmed hat, dark glasses, scarf, overcoat, and gloves in the warm Mediterranean air. "Is something wrong?" Triton asked.

"Only that we miss your company," Medusa said. "Come here and tell us what you see. Will the weather stay favorable? Will our voyage be a calm one?"

Through his dark glasses, Triton looked out to sea. "I know these waters, but I cannot predict the weather. And the sea is always too mercurial to predict."

"As mercurial as the human heart?" Medusa asked. "The human poets say such things."

Triton snorted. "Humans? Humans are as predictable as they ever were."

"Let us not judge our far more distant cousins too harshly," Karnak said. "Medusa and I just made the acquaintance of some...surprising humans in Italy."

"Surprising? Unpredictable?" Triton echoed with sarcasm. "Why don't I take off this disguise and we'll see how your human crew here react?"

"You cannot have forgotten how the Fantastic Four once saved your life from the Seeker?" Medusa asked Triton. "Do you hold them in such low esteem as well now?"

"The Fantastic Four are special beings, like us," Triton said. "They are not like these ordinary humans around us."

Medusa looked to Karnak for advice, but Karnak was looking out to sea now as well.

"What are those?" Karnak asked, squinting under his mask.

Medusa and Triton joined him in looking out at the black dots on the horizon that were quickly growing larger and closer.

"Men on little surfboards," Triton said after a pause, "but moving unbelievably fast."

"Wahooo!" Ric Roder howled over the roar of the wake behind his hoverboard.

"Right on!" Hobbit shouted from Ric's right flank.

"I'm reeling in dreamsville!" Dob shouted from Hobbit's right flank.

"Yeah, baby, yeah!" Tyrk shouted from Ric's left flank.

"Stone the crows!" Stilman shouted from Tyrk's left flank.

The five strange men in wet suits, astride fast-moving boards with no visible means of propulsion, were almost alongside the ship now. "They can't be Inhumans, can they?" Medusa asked. "Where did they get that technology? Triton, do you recognize them?"

"No," Triton said.

"And we can only speculate about your first two questions until we've communicated with them," Karnak said. Playing a hunch, Karnak put his hands to the sides of his mouth and shouted, "Ahoy!" as loud as he could.

As if in answer, the man in the middle unholstered some sort of weapon that looked like a cross between a gun and a chrome hairblower. Then each of the others did the same.

"I think we can rule out their intentions being non-hostile," Karnak said as the five men rode swiftly past the port bow of the ship and fired energy blasts into the keel.

"How handy you insisted I come along," Triton said as he doffed his hat, scarf, and coat. "This looks like a job for me." Concentrating on the threat in the water, Triton barely noticed the startled cries of the crew behind him as they noticed for the first time his green, scaly skin. And then, before Medusa or Karnak could warn him not to, he was overboard and in the water.

Hobbit, Dob, Tyrk, and Stilman were coming around the starboard side when Tyrk called out to the others, "Hey, before we sink her, let's see who can shoot out the most portholes!"

"I'll bet you 20 universos I can hit more!" Stilman said, but then added, "Hey, no fair! You're closer to the ship! Get ba—ahh!" He was cut short as green arms reached up from underwater, seized his legs, and pulled him under. There was tremendous thrashing in the water and then nothing.

On the ship, alarm bells were sounding and members of the crew raced below to check the breach. On deck, Medusa and Karnak were startled when one of the "surfboarding" men vaulted over the rail and fired his weapon into the ship's smokestack. The top half of the smokestack exploded and its debris rained down on the stern of the ship. The man's hoverboard had split in two halves and retracted under each of his feet. Most remarkably, the man had a second right arm made entirely of plastic. He began barking orders to the crew in what sounded like Serbo-Croatian to Medusa and Karnak.

Karnak was on the intruder in a flash, delivering a smashing open hand strike to the man's gun hand to disarm him, followed by what would have looked like a Judo flip to anyone who's eyes could keep up. Karnak paused and took a defensive stance as his unarmed foe tumbled across the deck before catching himself. "I don't know if your grudge is with this crew or us," Karnak said in French, in the hope his attacker knew it, "but you would be wise to surrender."

Ric stood up and smiled. "Oh, this is nice," he said, the translator program in his suit turning his words to French. "I'm going to have to push my suit to level four."

Back on the surface of the water, Hobbit, Dob, and Tyrk turned their suits up to level three. "Keep carving up this boat!" Tyrk told the others. "I'll handle whatever's down there!" His suit extended a clear plastic hood over Tyrk's head that filled with air, and then he dove underwater on his hoverboard. No sooner was he below the surface then he saw a green-skinned monster coming at him like something out of an old-fashioned horror movie. He tried to bring his gun to bear, but his arm moved slower underwater and his opponent was faster. And even powered up to level three, the gloved fist struck him hard enough that everything went dark for him.

Back on deck, Karnark and Ric circled around each other in defensive stances. Karnak made the opening thrust with the knife edge of his hand, but Ric easily blocked it with one of his forearms. Karnak delivered two more thrusts in rapid succession, the first Ric blocked, but the second struck Ric in the floating ribs and made him double over.

"Why not…give up now and surrender the box to us?" Ric asked with surprising bravado for a man who had dropped his fighting stance.

Before Karnak could answer, Medusa's hair entangled Ric at the waist, picked him up, and slammed him halfway through the deck where he became tightly wedged.

"How do you know of the box?" Medusa asked, holding Ric's dropped weapon directly at him.

"Say…you two are superheroes, aren't you?" Ric asked. "This is great! Actual 20th century superheroes! You're, uh, who now? Karate Kid and Spider-Woman? Oh, and pull the trigger all you like. The gun is keyed to my suit and can't be fired by someone not holding it."

Just then, a terrific sound of metal grinding on metal filled the air and the deck tilted. Medusa stumbled, though her hair caught the railing. Karnak was off-balance for just a moment, but in that moment their prisoner had broken the deck boards around him and fallen down into water in the hold with a loud splash.

"They're tearing the ship apart looking for the box!" Medusa called out, but Karnak was already on his way to the stairs that led below deck.

Karnak could see water at the bottom of the stairs beneath him. The ship had obviously sustained so much damage that sinking seemed imminent. But before Karnak could reach the bottom of the stairs, a fist punched through the wall right beside Karnak and he barely dodged it in time.

"Guess who's on level six?" Ric boasted, again translated into French.

Karnak did not bother to answer with words, but with an open hand strike to the throat. He winced as his hand bounced off something invisible.

"Guess who has a forcefield on level six?" Ric continued, mockingly, as he threw a flurry of punches with all three fists that Karnak dodged.

Since there was little room to dodge side-to-side in the narrow staircase, it meant Karnak had to continue dodging as he moved forward, even though he knew this would eventually lead his foe right to the box.

Underwater, Triton was surprised by the strength of his second foe. He had wasted precious time grappling with him for the raygun that even fired underwater. Now he grabbed the hood over the man's face and tore at it with all his strength. Just as Mr. Fantastic had once defeated him on land by rupturing his water-lined suit, now Triton defeated his foe by rupturing his air-lined suit. The man looked both surprised and frightened as Triton delivered a punch to the chest that knocked the air out of the man's lungs. Victory was assured now, but rather than let the man drown, Triton hauled him quickly to the surface.

The surface of the water was now lined with debris from the ship. A long strip of floating metal provided a life raft for Triton's prisoner. Then Triton started looking around for the remaining attackers. In his absence, they had been busy slicing up the ship with their rayguns. Every compartment of the ship looked to be ruptured and taking on water. The fore end of the ship was already separated from the rest of the vessel and had tipped over, prow end up. The whole ship would be under water in minutes. Triton harbored little sentiment towards the crew personally, but this blatant disregard for their lives was an outrage even to an Inhuman who scarcely identified with humans. When he saw the two remaining "surfers" - Hobbit and Dob - come around the aft end of the ship again, laughing at their own acts of destruction, Triton was eager to lay into them.

"Pòmôæ! Pòmôæ!" The Yugoslavian crew cried for help on what remained of the deck.

Medusa, for her part, was busy trying to help evacuate what crewmen were not already in the water. Lifeboats had fallen into the water before most of the crew was on board, so Medusa was picking up crewmen with her hair and lowering them down towards the lifeboats. As surprised as everyone was by what her hair could do, no one objected to her help given the circumstances. Over the rail, she spotted two more of their attackers coming around the aft end of the ship. Medusa grasped the curl of a deck-mounted ventilator, tore it from its moorings, and hurled it down on top of one of the "surfers" before he could fire at Triton with their accursed rayguns. She could take some little comfort in seeing her target capsize. Medusa looked down at the raygun she had taken earlier and tried pulling the trigger again, to no effect.

Another compartment of the ship, heavy with water, began to tear away from the rest of the ship and sink under its own weight. As it listed to starboard, Medusa could see the holes smashed in the side where portholes had been. Out of one of those openings suddenly dashed Karnak, clutching the box in his arms. Karnak ran up the steep slope of the ship towards where the deck was still level, but his pursuer was almost right behind him.

"Catch, Medusa!" Karnak cried as he threw the box into the air. Then, before waiting to see if Medusa caught it, he spun around, dropped low, and sweep-kicked Ric's legs out from underneath him. Off-balance, Ric tumbled and slid down the side of the keel, but activated his hoverboard before he hit the waterline, turned around, and zoomed back to the deck for a rematch.

In the water, Triton was giving voice to his frustration. "How do - you scum - keep growing- stronger? Huh?" he asked, but on every other word he was slamming Hobbit into the keel face-first until the forcefield disrupted on the second to last shove. Now he had another unconscious man in his arms and needed to find more flotsam large enough to support the man's weight. But before he did he spotted the other man, Dob, back up on his hoverboard and right in front of one of the lifeboats. That man still had his gun and it was aimed right at Triton. Triton looked into his eyes and saw he would pull the trigger; the fact that Triton was holding one of his comrades-in-arms did not seem to phase him at all. And this is how it would end, he thought ruefully. Killed by an anonymous assassin while treading water in front of a boatload of witnesses. As angry as Triton was at his attacker, he was suddenly sickened by the fact that the sailors in the lifeboat probably thought he was the monster and not the man with the gun.

Dob started to pull the trigger when a seated oarsman in the lifeboat swung his oar high and wide and struck Dob in the back. Surprised, Dob's aim was spoiled and the shot went wide of its mark. Triton was surprised too, for it had not been done by accident. The men in the lifeboat, who had witnessed all, were smiling at Triton now and gave him the "thumbs up." In that moment, Triton learned something of what lies within the human heart. And, as he hurled himself into those final moments of battle, he approved.

**NEXT ISH**

The Fate of Roder's Gang! More Mystery in Rhodes! A Special, Surprise Guest-Villain! And, because THIS Inhuman joins our cast, the issue has to be called… "Return of the King!"


	6. Chapter 6

Return of the King

Attilan. May 17, 1919.

House Amaquelin in the Royal Quarter of Attilan echoed with the sobs of a crying girl. This was unusual for two reasons. One was that the youngest daughter, Crystal, who was a needier child and more prone to such outbursts, was not at home and on a rare overnight stay with her grandparents. The other reason was that the older daughter, Medusa, was not prone to such fits. Though she was a princess, Medusa did not act like one. However, on this particular day, her parents, Quelin and Ambur, had been trying for awhile to calm Medusa down. It was difficult to get close to her, as Medusa's short hair had stretched out two feet long and was flailing around madly, as it usually did on such rare occasions when she was so emotionally distraught. Medusa's cheeks were already red and stinging from her hair accidentally whipping her cheeks and that was not helping matters any.

Ambur had already asked six times what was wrong, but this time Medusa finally responded. Between gasps for breath after so much crying, Medusa managed to say, "Maximus says…that you named me…Medusa…because I'm ugly…that I'm so ugly I…turn people to stone." And then she went right back to sobbing and buried her head in the arm of the chair her hair had already knocked over.

Quelin and Ambur looked at each other, each with a somewhat reproachful look in their eye, leaving unsaid, "Well, you knew this day was coming, didn't you?" Instead, Ambur went back to trying to sooth Medusa's hair by stroking it and said, "Maximus is a clever boy and has been learning about human mythology. The people of Greece once believed in something called Medusa that could turn people to stone, but you can't imagine that we named you Medusa after that. 'Medu', as you know, in our language, means beautiful, and 'Salith' means messenger from Heaven. We started calling you Medusa for short, long before anyone told us what that meant to humans."

Medusa was still crying lightly, but her hair had calmed down enough that Quelin could get close to his daughter and kneel beside her. "Medusalith, we've decided that you don't have to play with your cousin Maximus anymore if you don't want to. But we would like you to meet another cousin of yours. Would you like to do that now?"

Curiosity got the better of Medusa, so she soon stopped herself from crying and nodded her approval to her waiting parents. Both of them were much relieved to see this change in mood and smiled as they led Medusa back to her room so her servants could clean her up after her outburst. Shortly, with her face clean and wearing a fresh suit, Medusa was following her parents out of the front doors of their home, under the tall, steep archway, and down the steps to the promenade.

"Where does this cousin live?" Medusa asked as they walked.

"At the palace," Quelin replied.

"With Maximus?" Medusa said, grimacing.

"No, in an entirely separate wing," Ambur responded. "You won't even see Maximus."

The Royal Palace of Attilan was huge, grand, fabulously ornate, and amazingly ancient, yet Medusa had been coming there so long now that she paid it no attention as she passed through portal after portal into the depths of the palace. At last they came to a rather simple hallway with chairs along one wall that faced a window. The window did not face outside, though, but into another room. The other room was as nice a living room as Medusa could imagine, filled with only child-sized furniture, toys, and multimedia entertainment. Standing in the midst of all that was a boy who was staring back at her through the glass. The boy had long black hair, big blue eyes, and looked to be just about the cutest boy Medusa had ever seen. The boy also had a curious look on his face that Medusa judged to be loneliness, but a loneliness deeper and sadder than any she had ever seen before.

"Can I go in there with him?" Medusa asked her parents.

"No, I'm afraid you can't," Quelin said gently.

Medusa pressed her hands to the glass and smiled at the boy inside. Telling a child, even as mature a nine-year old girl as Medusa was, that you cannot do something is always a mistake. This made Medusa terribly eager to be on the other side of that glass, in there, with that boy. She vowed right then that someday she would. 

The Adriatic Sea. Now.

The rear boat deck of the _Marjan _was touching the waterline as the damage Ric Roder's Gang did to the cargo ship continued to cause its rapid sinking. On what remained of the vessel above the waterline, Triton had rejoined Medusa and Karnak for a final stand against Ric Roder himself, the only member of his gang still fighting. While the Inhumans took advantage of the breather to get their second winds, Ric confidently smirked and cracked the knuckles on all three of his hands.

"Why so confident?" Triton asked. "We have you outnumbered and have already bested all your comrades."

"My buddies from the future don't have power suits that juice up as high as mine," Ric said. "I'm on level eight now. Care to try me?"

Ric waited only a second before taking the offensive. With two long strides he was in arm's reach of all three Inhumans. Medusa stepped back and to the left, clearly intending to flank him. Triton came straight at him, while Karnak came up fast on his right. Triton lacked the subtlety of his other two foes and went for a straight-on punch to the jaw. Ric saw it coming with time to spare and could have dodged, but blocked with his left arm to size up his opponent's strength. He smiled as he realized he was stronger than Triton. One well-placed punch would take a lot of the fight out of his green-scaled foe. Annoyingly, the combat programming in Ric's suit had analyzed Karnak as the greater threat and was keeping both his right arms busy blocking strikes aimed at key pressure points. The combat program quickly analyzed that Karnak was feinting everytime he went to the left, but Karnak just as quickly realized he had been read and switched tactics. Karnak went for a series of rabbit punches to the kidney, landing one good blow before the combat program compensated. Ric went for a neck strike to end this quickly. Karnak barely ducked under it in time and it left him off-balance and vulnerable for just a moment. Before Ric could follow through with a killing strike, though, he found he was being held back.

Triton had switched from throwing punches to grappling and had a partial hold on Ric's left arm. Annoyed, Ric let Karnak go for a moment, grabbed Triton with both right arms, picked him up, and slammed him down through the deck planks with a terrible "crash", not unlike Medusa had done to him when his suit was still on a lower setting. Remembering the long-haired redhead, Ric glanced around and realized he had not only let her flank him, but she was behind him now. Before he could spin around, he had a face full of hair and heard a "crack" like a whip. He started to tear the hair from his eyes, but Karnak was back on him already with a strike to the solar plexus Ric could feel even though his suit hardened like armor to absorb it. Even sightless, Ric blocked a second blow to the same spot, but was completely unprepared for the sweep kick that followed. Between that and the terrific strength of Medusa's hair, they managed to topple Ric to the deck.

Ric reached for the hair wrapped around his head, but Medusa must have sensed her vulnerability and withdrew it. Ric rolled backwards away from her as she used her hair like a whip again, hand-springing to his feet and spinning to face them with his back to the railing on the port side of the badly tilted vessel. Karnak was already in front of him again, making a flurry of open-handed strikes. For every two strikes Karnak blocked, though, he was able to get in a good right hook with his third arm. Karnak was reeling backward from each blow, his nose already bloodied. Ric pressed his advantage, both eager to finish off another foe and to avoid fighting on the edge of the ship. He did not realize he had walked into a trap until he was close enough to the hole he had knocked Triton through for Triton to reach up and grab his leg. Before Ric could kick him off, Medusa's hair stretched out and wrapped around his arms. Ric fought back at once, pulling at the hair and trying to keep it from pinning his arms.

When another rupture in the hull of the ship sank below the waterline, the compartment inside quickly filled with seawater and pitched the opposite end of the ship higher into the air. The deck tilted 10 degrees and threw all the standing combatants off-balance. Triton, who was already down on the deck, used the opportunity to right himself before Ric recovered and put Ric in a bearhug.

"I can't hold him!" Triton called out as Ric started to resist with superior strength.

Medusa answered by throwing her hair back into the struggle, but Ric already had a right arm wrested free. Medusa snared Ric's free fist in a huge lock of hair and kept him from using it. And Karnak, rushing back in to assist, pinched a nerve at the base of Ric's skull and kept applying pressure there. After tense moments of struggle, Ric found himself feeling light-headed and dizzy and struggled less.

Ric's struggling lessened, not just because of the Inhumans, but his suit was running out of power, set at level eight for so long. When he found his gun suddenly back in his hand, he gripped it fervently in the hope that he could blast his way out of this. Only after he had his finger on the trigger did he realize that Medusa's hair had slipped the gun into his hand and held it there and how his arm was bent – held in place by Medusa's hair so that the gun was pointed at the side of his own head.

"You were saying something about how this is keyed to only your hands?" Medusa asked.

Ric sighed. "Okay, okay. I'll power down just enough that fish-face here can't crush my ribs. This was just a job to me, okay? It's not worth dying over."

"A job?" Karnak asked. "Someone hired you to retrieve our box? Who? Why?"

"This guy from the future – even later than my future is from here. Why don't you ask him yourself why? I was supposed to contact him once you were all dead and I had the box."

"How can we trust you?" Triton asked.

"I'm the one pointing a gun to my own head," Ric said with defiant sarcasm. "He rigged something special to the heels of my suit. I'm supposed to click my heels three times to let him know I've got the box."

Since no one stopped him, Ric began clicking his heels together. To everyone's surprise, Ric began to convulse and his head lolled back. All three Inhumans received a nasty electric shock before they let go of him. Ric was wracked by spasms as he fell to the deck, but stopped moving the moment he hit it. His body smoldered against the wet planks.

Medusa, Karnak, and Triton could only look at each other and wonder.

Kang's Summer Palace. Late 25th century.

The monitor screen went blank and Kang the Conqueror turned away. "Alas, poor Ric!" he said with a wicked smile. "Had he retrieved the box for me, I would have gladly returned him to the future. Because he failed, he had to die. So tragic that he did not make it back, as he was scheduled to meet the woman of his dreams in another week. The offspring of their union would have even gone on to found a resistance movement that would have given me some trouble…"

With a chuckle, Kang held out the flute of champagne in his hand and waited for the nearby robot to come fetch it. "This has turned flat; pour me another," he ordered. "Computer!" he shouted next. "Recalculate known data on all recently searched subjects and scroll datastream at reading speed."

Kang stood up and, with hands clasped behind his back, watched images project on the large screen. First among them was a scanned image of a newspaper headline from a 1971 Greek newspaper followed by the same image with the text translated. "The _Marjan_ sank, but all hands and passengers survived," he read. "I'll miss the live feed I was receiving from the devices I concealed on my time-displaced hoodlums, but it is easy enough to conjecture on what happened from what I know of history. Those three called the Inhumans survived the sinking and were rescued, just like the crew. They saved the box as well. They landed safely in Greece while they waited for their king to join them, unaware that they – and the prize I covet - were being observed the whole while by the man I'm about to contact…"

Rhodes, Greece. October 2, 1971.

The evening breeze was chilly that blew in off the Aegean Sea over the Island of Rhodes. Medusa pulled the long, fur-trimmed coat tighter around her that she was wearing over her tight green bodysuit. She stared out over the harbor. Karnak, a lesser student of human fashion, had simply donned a short-sleeve polo shirt over his tight, green and white bodysuit and had a cap perched precariously atop his oversized head. The harbor dock was well-lit by lampposts, but also by two yellow, glowing balls of light that hovered in the air about five feet above and behind the two Inhumans.

A Greek couple was taking a romantic stroll along the harbor, but slowed down to stare at the glowing balls of light hovering in the air.

"Big fireflies this time of year, eh?" Karnak said to them in Greek. The couple slowly nodded and walked on. Karnak smiled at how impressionable humans could be.

Medusa looked less happy. "A whole week now those idiotic globes have been following us. Do you think they are somehow preventing Lockjaw from getting here?"

"Yesterday you were sure they were some sort of message from the Great Refuge," Karnak said with a shrug. "Surely idle speculation will do us no good. And since those lights seem to have neither form nor function, we might as well ignore them. The one good thing about it is that we can keep track of where Triton is swimming thanks to the one following him."

Karnak was pointing out to Medusa where he could see the faint glow of the third glowing ball underwater when the light grew brighter. Indeed, the same thing was happening to the two ones floating in the air behind them. Before either of them could comment on it, a fourth light appeared – but this light was much more familiar. The white glow could only herald the arrival of Lockjaw, who was even now materializing on the empty part of the dock just 10 meters away.

"What's wrong?" Medusa asked Karnak. Her worried expression and query came from the strange fluctuation in the white light that seemed to flicker now like a nimbus of white flame around the huge mastiff and the person appearing next to him. The lights hovering in the air turned into white light as well and took on the same fire-like appearance until the flash surrounding Lockjaw faded. Only then did the hovering lights return to their own shade of yellow and their steady glow.

Lockjaw let out a bark-like greeting. Medusa and Karnak stopped watching the lights and returned their gaze to Lockjaw and who had teleported with him. Even were he not clad in his familiar, tight black bodysuit with the jagged, light blue lines down the front and the antennae on the forehead of his mask and the fan-like flaps between his arms and the sides of his body – well, Medusa was sure she would have recognized Black Bolt by his stance alone even if disguised and standing in near darkness. She ran to the side of her king and the man that she loved.

Black Bolt, for his part, looked only at her as she ran to him. He welcomed her into his arms and held her lightly. He kept his loving gaze trained on her face so she could take her time reading every sign in his features.

With practiced ease Medusa recognized the signs of longing and loneliness in every wrinkle around his eyes, how excited he was in a flare of a nostril, and how happy he was by the grin that spread across his handsome face. She smiled back and, when he pulled her to his lips, she welcomed the kiss he gave her.

Karnak walked slowly around them to Lockjaw's side, modestly turning his gaze away from what should have been a private moment and scratching Lockjaw's ear. There would be plenty of time, he thought, to ask Black Bolt what business had kept him in Attilan so long when they were done or to mention of the box kept in hiding. He was distracted only by the sound of Triton coming up from out of the water nearby and hoisting himself up onto the dock.

"What happened to the lights?" Triton asked before spotting Black Bolt among them. "My liege – look!" he then cried.

The light that had trailed Triton rose higher into the air and joined the other two lights. They began to move much faster, all three along a parallel arc that made a wide circle around the five Inhumans. Black Bolt let go of Medusa and his antennae began to crackle with electricity as he prepared to defend them if this was a threat. Triton joined the others, wishing to be at their side if an attack was forthcoming. The lights circled faster and faster and then, just as abruptly as they had begun circling, they broke off and began floating more slowly away from them. Black Bolt motioned for everyone to follow.

"You are right, my liege," Karnak said as he divested himself of his cap and shirt. "I suspect they are meant to be followed."

Medusa also decided to lose her coat as the five Inhumans gave chase to the mysterious lights. The chase led from the harbor up a neighboring hill. The ruins of an ancient temple sat on top of the hill. And there the lights stopped – stopped right beside a man wearing a green hooded cloak and tunic over a suit of armor. "Welcome to Rhodes, King of the Inhumans," said Doctor Doom.

NEXT ISH: Black Bolt vs. Dr. Doom! 'Nuff said!


	7. Chapter 7

"A Day for Reckoning"

October 17, 1945. Tibet.

On a quiet pass between two mountains sat a tiny village. If asked, the villagers would have said it was a perfectly ordinary day. The men had milked their yaks, the milk was left for the women to churn into butter and yogurt, and some of the men had gone off with the yaks into the mountains to watch them graze while others lingered and did other chores. When the three visitors arrived, no one thought it unusual because the visitors had come so often before then.

The visitors appeared to be travelers from afar, for they were Caucasian people, and one of them was even a redhead with a huge head of hair. Another of the visitors was even more remarkable, with big hooves instead of feet, like a yak. The last of the visitors was quiet and never said a word. He would have attracted the least attention, though he wore a mask like the others did. Everyone had thought them to be bandits the first time they arrived, yet the visitors were always polite guests and paid for everything they took.

"Good morning!" said Gorgon, the big one with hooves for feet. He was the loudest of the three and always spoke first to announce their arrival, so as not to take the villagers unaware and shock them. "Is yogurt ready?"

"Soon," said one of the village women. "Welcome back. What did you bring with you this time?"

Medusa, the young woman with the big red hair, held up a plastic bag. "Blueberries!" she said. "We've enough for everyone to try one." She then handed the bag to Gorgon, who eagerly spoke to the village women about the virtues of blueberries in yogurt.

Black Bolt, the quiet one, walked past the villagers to the far end of the village. Here, the old road switched back along the side of the mountain and, beyond the pass, was nothing but open space and a glorious, scenic view. Often had Black Bolt come to stand here and often with Medusa beside him, so it was no surprise to him when he found her gloved hand slide into his own. He just turned and looked with a wistful smile that spoke volumes to her.

"I know," Medusa said. "There's so much world out there, isn't there? It's not fair that we're cooped up here, not allowed to stray more than a few miles from Attilan. Do you know my mother had already seen Europe by my age? But now that the outside world has atomic weapons, they say it's not safe enough out there for me to go anymore. Don't you wish you could?"

Black Bolt nodded and pointed east.

"Really? China?" she said. "Hmm, I guess it would be interesting to see that too. But that's the problem, isn't it? They say that nowhere is safe for us, but if nowhere is safe, then how is Attilan any safer? Aren't we all in danger no matter where we are? I mean, I could jump off this cliff a lot easier than I could get killed by an atomic weapon, don't you think?" She caught Black Bolt's slightly worried glance and continued with a little laugh. "No! I'm not actually going to do it! But don't you wish to do something? Something we're not supposed to do? Is your idea of fun really sneaking off to a human village and introducing them to non-indigenous fruit?" She looked around, biting her lip lightly as she mulled over a thought. "Come on!" she said quietly when she was done thinking about it and tugged at Black Bolt's hand.

They started down the road from the pass together until they had dropped out of sight of the village. Below them was a forested valley and all around them were more mountains. "Can't you—I mean...would you like to speak?" she asked.

He turned on her with a look of horror on his face that shocked her, but she pressed on. "I know everyone says you shouldn't and that there's some terrible power to your voice, but don't you wonder what it sounds like? I know how badly I want to hear it. And no one will know. We're far enough away from the village that no one will get hurt..." She looked into his eyes and saw steely determination, though his face looked more sad than grim. He did want to, but knew he should not.

Medusa smiled, held his arm, and nestled her head against his shoulder without saying another word. She had not planned it as a test, but she realized now how proud she was that Black Bolt always did the right thing.

November 1, 1971. Rhodes, Greece.

First the Titanium Man had wanted the box. Then someone had sent a gang from the future to steal it. Then Dr. Doom simply asked for it. As surprising as each of these events had been, what surprised Medusa more was when, after Black Bolt refused, Dr. Doom switched tactics and proposed a series of conferences between the two monarchs – and surprising her even more was when Black Bolt accepted.

Their chosen location was Rhodes – the same ruins where they had first met. Doom arranged everything. They had the permission of the local government to use the ruins. Doom contracted a local caterer for the conferences and the tables and chairs they used even came from local carpenters. It was all above board – Karnak had checked thoroughly. Gorgon had come to serve as food taster. Medusa was, of course, her silent monarch's interpreter. Several other Inhumans had come to earlier conferences out of curiosity. This was the third conference. Dr. Doom, for his part, brought a small retinue of soldiers with him each time, but never referred to any of them by name. No one else represented Latvia, as in matters of state Doom apparently was loath to delegate.

"The next point of old business I wished to bring up," Dr. Doom said in his refined Gypsy accent, "is the pact of mutual defense against enemies abroad." He raised a finger of his armored gauntlet and a uniformed soldier came running up to the oak table with papers in hand. The soldier hurriedly laid a copy in front of Black Bolt, Medusa, and Gorgon, who had opted to stand by the table instead of sit at it. Gorgon looked down at the paper, cross-armed, and snorted at it. Black Bolt and Medusa both picked up their copies in black-gloved hands and eyed the contents thoughtfully.

"We were quite clear before that we would not ally with you against the United States," Medusa reminded Dr. Doom.

"You will find I have stricken all references to the U.S. from this copy of the treaty. This entails our Eastern fronts. The Soviet Union would dearly love to have my homeland back after I wrested it from them and do not think that China would not covet your secret city if they knew its whereabouts. We could give each other much surreptitious aid that would not jeopardize the Hidden Refuge."

Black Bolt gave Medusa a neutral look and laid down his copy.

"We will review the new wording," Medusa said, "but we do not wish to be drawn into any conflicts with other nations."

"Naturally," Doom said. "We may table this matter for now. I wish to bring up my last point of old business – the box."

Medusa eyed Black Bolt to make sure he still had the same wary look on the subject.

"I have made you generous offers," Doom continued, "both to acquire the box and its contents from you permanently or to be allowed to borrow them for a length of time."

"Both of which we respectfully declined," Medusa said.

"Indeed. I will make you one last offer – the oil products and timber I had offered to export to you before and, in exchange, my chance to personally study the box in a place of your choosing."

"Do you still refuse to tell us how you came to know of the box?" Medusa asked.

"I do."

Medusa glanced at Black Bolt, noticing that he was hastily writing her a note. She noticed Doom watching intently as Black Bolt handed her the note to read. "We are interested in your offer," she said. "If you will tell us how you came to learn of the Inhumans and our secret city, we will allow you to examine the box."

"Very well," Doom said without hesitation. "It will be a short tale. As you may or may not know, I had studied in the U.S. in my youth, until an accident occurred that left me hideously scarred. I fled the U.S., seeking isolation in the wilderness of Tibet. I was still there in 1945 when I happened upon a tiny village with visitors more strange to those parts than myself. One of them had bright red hair and another …had hooves," Doom said, glancing up at Gorgon. "Curious, I followed them from the mountain pass, stealthily and unnoticed, until they came to a walled city of spire-topped skyscrapers. Judging from the guarded entrances, I assumed visitors would not be welcome. So I went back to the village and other villages, seeking information about the mysterious city. No one knew, or would tell me, until I happened upon a remote monastery. Some of the monks there had come from the city they called Attilan. They were half-Inhuman, and hence outcasts in your society. They helped me forge the prototype of the armor I now wear. Does that satisfy you?"

"No," Medusa said, without even checking with Black Bolt. She had been watching Dr. Doom carefully in the telling and, even though she had only his eyes and his voice to read her instincts for reading people screamed to her. "There is something not right in your story, though I cannot place my finger on it. Will you tell us what you have left out?"

"My dear, I do not know what you mean. Doom does not lie. To suggest otherwise is to court disaster."

Now Medusa looked to Black Bolt, who looked back at her anxiously for an explanation. "Perhaps we can take a short recess and—"

"Come now," Doom said crossly, though his words were still polite. "We are all adults here. Why do you not say what you need to say right here?"

Medusa took a deep breath before she continued. "I do not believe your story. At least some of it is true, but there is a great deal you are hiding from us. I do not advise we allow you to see the box until you are more forthcoming."

Dr. Doom was silent as he stood up. "I tire of diplomacy," he said, holding onto the back of his chair. "I have extended you every consideration and courtesy, but I will make myself more plain on this final point – I will have that box." He stood still, but his gauntleted hand clutched the chair so tightly that the wood splintered.

Black Bolt and Medusa both stood up at this. Gorgon took two steps forward, only to be blocked from charging Doom by a lock of Medusa's hair that hovered in the air before him.

"Are you proposing war?" Medusa asked.

"Not at all. It is my personal honor that has been called into question. I demand a duel for compensation."

"A duel with me?" Medusa asked.

"Choose me," Gorgon practically growled.

"Please," Doom said dismissively. "I have entertained your involvement because your king cannot speak for himself, but you are really beneath me. I will duel with your king."

Doom's gaze was trained hotly on Black Bolt. Everyone else turned to watch the silent king. For a moment, Black Bolt met Doom's gaze as stiffly as if a statue. When Black Bolt's nod of the head came, it was as alarming as a shout.

"Then it is agreed!" Doom said. "Meet me in the courtyard of these ruins tomorrow, King of Attilan. Bring the box." With a swirl of his cape, Doom turned his back to them and marched off, his soldiers falling into line behind him.

Medusa and Gorgon came to the side of Black Bolt. Medusa looked at him with concern, while Gorgon wore a contented smile.

"I'm sorry," Medusa said first. "I am sure he was lying, or deceiving us in some way, just to acquire the box, but I had no idea he would suggest something so desperate as this."

"Desperate?" Gorgon echoed. "Don't be absurd. It's high time we dealt with Doom the way he deserves. Kick his butt, your highness."

Medusa looked back and forth between them, planning to counter that weak argument and intending to advise Black Bolt not to duel Dr. Doom. She wanted to point out how easy it would be to just walk away and leave Doom with nothing. But there was something in Black Bolt's look at her – something that, in all their decades together, she did not recognize and have a name for. She shrank from it and stayed quiet. Black Bolt glanced at her a moment longer and then turned away, with Gorgon at his side broaching the king on possible combat strategies. Medusa watched them walk away from her and did not feel like following. They had a pavilion set up near the ruins, but Medusa did not go there and stayed away from there all afternoon. She searched the ruins instead, aware that a man with Dr. Doom's reputation might be setting up traps there in order to cheat. Instead, she found Karnak there, close to evening.

"What are you doing here?" Medusa asked.

"I could ask you the same thing," Karnak said. "No one has seen you since this morning and everyone was worried sick that something had happened to you."

"I am trying to make sense of our king," Medusa said, looking at the crumbled stones around her. "Try to understand his strategy in accepting Doom's challenge."

"Why do you not ask him?" Karnak asked. When no answer was forthcoming from Medusa, he continued. "I have noticed you avoiding Black Bolt more and more these past few weeks. You had left for Italy to make some atonement for your past. Has that not made things better between you two?"

Medusa, who had been looking around absentmindedly, turned suddenly on Karnak. "No, it has not," she said. She let out a frustrated sigh, like she had been holding back all this time and now could not stop herself from talking about this if she tried. "I don't understand. I left to make sure I was worthy of him, worthy of his love. But it's still not right. The way he looks at me sometimes. I just...I just don't understand."

"You are sure it is the way he looks at you that is the problem?"

"No, I'm not sure. I—why? What do you mean?"

"I am sure I don't know," Karnak said quietly. After a long pause, he added, "I will see you in the morning at the duel."

November 2, 1971.

Black Bolt stood and waited. Some distance behind him, Medusa, Karnak, Lockjaw, and Gorgon were all standing behind a fallen pillar that marked the south boundary of the courtyard. Black Bolt looked calm and relaxed, as if he were meditating. Occasionally, a spark of electricity leaped from the antennae on his mask. Medusa's features were a snarled mixture of disdain for these proceedings and confusion at why Black Bolt continued with this farce. Karnak looked calmly on as he held the mysterious box in his hands they had liberated from the tomb in Yugoslavia. Gorgon looked agitated, as did Lockjaw.

The shuffling of the soldiers came first, followed by the clang of iron-shod feet striking the ancient stone pavement of the courtyard. The soldiers fanned out into a wide line on the north side of the courtyard. Before them, Doom just stood there, fists clenched in the armored gauntlets at his sides, glowering at the Inhumans through the eye holes in his metal mask.

"Before we begin," Dr. Doom said, "three rules. One, since I lack your personal superhuman abilities, it should be only fair that I be allowed the benefit of my scientific genius. Are we agreed on that point?"

Black Bolt nodded.

"Two," Doom continued, "I give you my word that my soldiers will not intervene if I have your word that the Royal Family will stay out of this. Three, that the duel will last until one of us yields. Since you will be unable to say when you are ready to surrender, I will accept it if you simply throw up your hands."

To these things as well, Black Bolt nodded.

"What does he hope to gain by this?" Medusa whispered to Karnak.

"What indeed," was all Karnak whispered back.

"This is a day for reckoning. Let the duel begin!" Doom called out. With surprising speed, he un-holstered the handgun he wore at his hip. Black Bolt dodged to the side as Dr. Doom fired an energy beam from the gun. Doom began to sweep his raygun after his target, but Black Bolt surrounded himself with a field of electrical force that disrupted the ray on contact with it. "Well played, Black Bolt," Doom said, "but I need only boost the power to the cosmic-beam and-"

As Dr. Doom was turning a knob on top of the "cosmic-beam gun", the electrical field around Black Bolt intensified, fed back along the path of the beam, and caused the gun to spark so horribly that Doom had to cast the weapon aside. The electrical beam emanating from Black Bolt's forehead would have struck Dr. Doom next, but a force field appeared around the doctor's armored form at the last second. Black Bolt lifted into the air and flew straight at Doom, leading with his right fist. He struck the field around Doom hard enough that the field wavered and collapsed. Without pause, Doom lifted his open hand and a cloud of gas emerged from the palm of his gauntlet into Black Bolt's face. Black Bolt choked it down rather than cough it out.

"Come on..." Medusa said on the sidelines. Though Black Bolt could not hear her, she asked aloud, "What is your plan?"

"You're certain he has one?" Karnak asked.

"He has to! Accepting the duel made no sense unless he had some ulterior motive to force Doom into combat."

"I am not so sure," Karnak said. "I understand Dr. Doom had dismissed you in front of him and love makes men do foolish things."

Medusa could not accept that. Black Bolt loved her, it was true, but he could never...not do the right thing. Suddenly, that day in the Himalayas came back to her, as well as a thousand other times she had thought the same thing. "Oh my God," Medusa said, turning her now ashen white face to Karnak, "I was all wrong! He hasn't been judging me this whole time – I've been judging him! I've thought of him as infallible since we were young; that he was too good for me, but he's not! He could be making a mistake. He might lose or even-" She did not finish the thought aloud, but leaped over the pillar to enter the courtyard.

In the courtyard, Black Bolt had shaken off the gas quickly, but it had bought Doom time to reach behind his belt and produce a grenade that he threw at Black Bolt's feet. In a second, Black Bolt was encased in a thick block of ice up to the bridge of his nose.

"Not strong enough to escape, Black Bolt?" Dr. Doom asked mockingly. "Are you thinking it is the gas that weakened you? Not only that. My machines have been sapping your electrical powers slowly since the duel began. Shall I show them to you?" Dr. Doom pressed a stud on his belt buckle and the whole ruins began to shake.

Medusa, who was halfway to Black Bolt's side, froze in place for a moment as chunks of stone flew loose from the ground where they had sat for two millennia. In their place rose four tall, thin structures that quickly began to unfold into crane-like arms. Each arm ended in a small sphere that crackled with electricity like a Tesla sphere. Above the combatants, the electricity around the four spheres tightened into beams that lanced out and met each other at a black mote equidistant to them all.

"The point where those beams intersect is a black hole," Dr. Doom went on explaining as he flipped up a panel on the back of his right gauntlet and dragged his finger carefully over the pad under it. "It will take just a moment to coordinate the beams so that you are directly in its-"

Doom was interrupted by the shower of rocks coming his way, hurled with near the velocity of bullets. They were not aimed at him, though. Medusa was throwing them at the ice encasing Black Bolt. As they struck, they cracked and chipped the ice. Dr. Doom worked furiously to manipulate the beams to lower the artificial black hole over Black Bolt, but was too slow. With perhaps two seconds left before contact, Black Bolt flexed with all his remaining might and scattered chunks of ice in all directions.

"Well?" Gorgon asked Karnak from back behind the sidelines. "Should we still consider this single combat at this point?"

"Honor is a tricky business..." was all Karnak could say.

"Soldiers! Kill them all!" Dr. Doom shouted.

The line of soldiers answered immediately by raising their rifles and taking aim.

Gorgon would not wait any longer to react. He ran up to Lockjaw, pacing nearby, and shouted, "Get me over by those soldiers now!"

Lockjaw, equally eager to do something, met Gorgon halfway and they both disappeared in a flash. A moment later, as the soldiers were pulling their triggers, Gorgon and Lockjaw reappeared, flanking the line of soldiers. Gorgon stomped his hoof on the ground. The ground shook – was literally rent apart – by the shockwave. Not a soldier in the line found firm ground under his feet anymore to stand on.

The courtyard shook as well, though the combatants there assumed each other was causing it. Medusa was throwing huge slabs of stone with her hair at Dr. Doom. The slabs shattered against Doom's force field, but the frantic pace of the missiles kept him on the defensive. Black Bolt tore one of the towers out of the ground and swung it hard over Doom's head. The containment sphere at the end of the tower's arm shattered, releasing an electromagnetic shockwave that engulfed Doom and threw the electronics housed in his armor into chaos. Between that and the shaking ground, it was enough to throw the iron-clad monarch off his feet. Medusa had been blown back, but Black Bolt stepped closer.

"Do you yield?" Medusa called out, though Black Bolt did not need speech to declare he had the upper hand now.

When he replied, Dr. Doom did not look at them, but looked past them at Karnak. "My dear, I am about to win," he said.

As if on cue, a tiny rocket whizzed past Karnak. As it flew past the stone box Karnak still held, the box was suddenly torn from his grip as if by some magnetic force. The box adhered to the side of the tiny rocket as it zoomed up and away from the ruins.

"I have won!" Doom boasted loudly. Also on cue – voice-activated, to be precise – the three remaining containment spheres spilled their contents and erupted with bolts of lightning. Black Bolt moved to shield Medusa, absorbing the electricity back into his body. But the diversion was all the time Doom needed to rise back to his feet, tear off his cape, and activate the mechanical jet pack that had been hidden under it. With a fiery blast of burnt rocket fuel, Dr. Doom lifted off into the air on the same trajectory as the rocket carrying the stone box. Black Bolt took off into the air to pursue, but his levitation speed was no match for the jet pack or rocket.

In almost as short a time as the duel had been, Gorgon and Lockjaw intimidated the Latvian soldiers into dropping their rifles and surrendering. Karnak emerged and knelt submissively before Black Bolt as soon as he landed.

"I apologize, Black Bolt, for not having seen sooner that the duel was just a diversion," Karnak said meekly.

"We were all fooled by Doom," Medusa said. She looked to Black Bolt and saw he not only agreed, but there was no trace of that mysterious look that she now knew was disappointment with how she judged him. He was all too glad she had included him in that statement. "But that does not mean we must accept defeat. We will take back what is ours, even if we must chase Doom down to his very doorstep."

NEXT: The penultimate chapter in the Time Box Saga! More is revealed and secrets are learned, but someone will be betrayed and on Latvian soil the Royal Family takes on both Doom AND Kang! What more can you ask for? Be here in 28 days for "My Future, My Destiny!"


	8. Chapter 8

"My Future, My Destiny!" 

December 5, 1971.

Castle Doom, Doomstadt, Latvia.

The invasion did not go well.

Medusa was in chains, her hair shreared so short that she could only stretch it halfway down her back. Gorgon was hanging from the ceiling, his hooves unable to reach anything but empty air. Karnak was standing, but his hands were encased in large metal cuffs that were shackled to the floor. Triton was shackled to the wall, rasping for oxygen as he was badly dehydrated. Lockjaw wore a collar that kept him asleep on the floor. Black Bolt was hovering in the air, surrounded by a cocoon of glowing spheres. Around them were some of the accouterments of a science lab, though all the chains suggested that their captor performed unwilling test subjects.

Dr. Doom walked past them all, holding the box. "You all should have taken one of my earlier offers," he said, smiling behind his metal mask. "Following me to my homeland? Sheer folly. Attempting to beard me in my own lair? The height of idiocy. Attilan shall pay a dear ransom for each of you that I choose to release. And the object you crossed all of Europe to regain? As per our bargain..." Dr. Doom said as he extended his gauntleted hand and held out the ornate metal box, "the box is yours."

A gauntleted hand took the box from Dr. Doom. Kang the Conqueror smiled and the malleable plasti-steel mask contoured to match the change in the features beneath it. "Thank you, Doom. I never doubted you." Kang walked past Dr. Doom towards the captured Inhumans. "But most of all, I have you to thank. I could have liberated this box from the tomb where it sat for centuries at any time, but where would be the fun in that? It was much more entertaining to let you hold your own heritage in your hands for a while and then snatch it away from you."

"What do you know of our heritage?" Gorgon asked.

"Oh, I know much, as far as this item is concerned," Kang replied, holding the box just out of Gorgon's reach. "Perhaps more than you do yourselves."

"We know about Uzice, in 1471," Medusa said.

"I'm sure you do, my pretty," Kang said, coming over by her. He held the box nonchalantly tucked under his arm now. "Only your sources are slightly off. It was January of 1472 when the box opened. Every 500 years the box opens. Whoever holds the box can then send a message into the past – to your home city of Attilan 4,000 years ago, when your civilization was at its technological zenith. If the message is that all is well, then the box deactivates forever. If the message is that all is not well, then the box acts as a time machine, transporting weapons to the future. Like it did to end the Siege of Uzice. It is a time capsule in a sense, you see, though it is empty until it needs to be filled."

"So you are after the weapons of ancient Attilan," Karnak said.

"Ha, the weapons I could seize at any time," Kang responded. "It is the box alone that intrigues me. I collect all things time-related. This particular time capsule has some sort of space-time anchor that prevents it from being teleported through either, except during a short window of time when its time travel circuit is opened. I will be leaving for the future with it at that time and will ask Doom to host you as his guests until that time, so you can see me off."

"And what does Doom get out of it?" Medusa asked.

"Why, his pick of Attilan's ancient weapons, of course," Kang said, "and a chance to help out his own descendant."

Kang turned his attention to Black Bolt, who had watched Kang intently the whole while, but said nothing. Kang loved that the others desperately sought information from him, but he was annoyed by the smug silence of their leader. So intently did he return Black Bolt's stare that Kang did not seem to notice Dr. Doom step up to a switch on a machine against the far wall and throw it – until it was too late.

"What?" Kang said as he found himself floating backwards. Struggling just to turn his head and see what was behind him, Kang only saw Doom walking up beside him as Kang found himself pinned to a metal panel against the wall.

"Thanks to my 'grappler ray', I think some renegotiations are in order," Dr. Doom said. "I will have the box, the Royal Family of the Inhumans, the Inhumans' weapons from the past, and all your technological marvels from the future."

"You dare? You dare do this to Kang the Conqueror?" Kang asked fiercely, though concern was etched onto his face mask.

"Read your history books, Kang. Doom dares all."

"Don't you remember, when I found you drifting in space? I said my ancestor was the inventor of the time machine, which was you. How can you do this to your own future, the culmination of all you have accomplished and will accomplish?"

"Of course I remember..." Dr. Doom said.

Medusa, who had been watching and listening intently, stood up as much as her shackles allowed. She sensed the same uncertainty in Doom's voice she had heard back at the negotiating table when he told them about how he first saw them years ago in Tibet.

"...but did you seriously think I would yield to such sentiment when I have so much to gain?" Doom finished.

"Or do you remember," Kang continued, suddenly dropping the pretense of concern and smiling again, "when we went through this before?" Kang then stepped casually out of the "grappler ray" and away from the wall. "You old fool. Don't you realize my mastery of time? That I could have already been here before and done all this already? That I barely escaped you the first time, but made modifications to my armor that would render it immune to your primitive tractor beam technology this time?"

"No. No!" Doom cried with uncharacteristic dread in his voice. "Full defense!" he shouted to the voice-activated machines in the room.

The first response was from objects mounted on the upper walls that looked like cameras, but turned out to be laser-beam weapons. Since Doom was pointing to Kang, the weapons swiveled to target him and all fired simultaneously. The laser beams bounced off the reflective coating on Kang's costume and were reflected all around the room. Before the lasers cut off, one of the lasers landed on one of Gorgon's chains and cut right through it. He grabbed hold of his remaining chain and swung his body back and forth until he was able to kick his legs up over his head and smash the chain between both hooves. He was too close to the ground to right himself and fell on his posterior.

Across the chamber, Dr. Doom was busy firing a hyper-sonic blaster at Kang, but Kang countered by teleporting a "vibration ray" rifle into his hands and fired back. The two weapons shook the room, but canceled each other out. Gorgon wanted no part in getting in the middle of that and, once he was standing, he gave the floor a light stomp with his hoof. The resulting hyper-shock caused the floor to begin to crumble and, before they were aware of what was happening, Dr. Doom and Kang fell with the rubble into the floor below them.

"That will buy us some time," Gorgon said as he ran up to Karnak and gave the chain on Karnak's right arm a tap with his hoof.

"Free Medusa next," Karnak said, holding the chain on his left arm taut and searching for the weakest link to strike with his bare hand.

"How are you holding up, Medusa?" Gorgon asked as he broke the chains off both her arms.

"I've never felt more powerless, but don't worry about me. How will we free Black Bolt? Dr. Doom said yesterday something about that being a 'sub-space field'."

"I could start smashing machines until I find which one controls the field," Gorgon said.

"I could use a little help over here too..." Triton said weakly from across the room.

"The floor looks too weak to cross," Karnak, who was now free, said, "and from the din down below the fight is only getting worse."

Gorgon had looked away to appraise Triton's situation, but when he looked back at Medusa he saw that she was reaching up for the "sub-space field" around Black Bolt. "Maybe you shouldn't touch that!" he warned.

"We have to do something," Medusa said as she reached out with her gloved hand to the space between the glowing globules – and found her hand stopped. "It feels solid!" she shared.

"Anything solid my hooves can shatter," Gorgon said. "Help me pull him lower."

Medusa and Gorgon grabbed hold of the invisible sides of the "sub-space field" and, though they had watched Black Bolt struggling mightily against it from inside, it was effortless to move it from the outside. One it was low enough, Gorgon struck at the field with his hoof – to no effect.

"Try aiming for one of the glowing spheres," Medusa suggested.

Gorgon did so and, upon contact, the sphere burst like a bubble and all those around it followed. The field began to collapse on itself and who knew what would have happened to Black Bolt had Medusa and Gorgon not pulled him out in time through the rupture Gorgon had made.

Black Bolt clasped his hand to Gorgon's shoulder to show his thanks and gave Medusa a quick kiss to show her he was alright, but after that he flew – literally - into action. He had seen and heard everything through the field and knew that freeing Triton was their next priority. With the fan-like wings under his arms spread wide, he soared over the open floor and crushed Triton's chains in both hands. Then he carried Triton to the side wall where Lockjaw slept and tore the collar free from Lockjaw's thick neck. Lockjaw awoke abruptly with a snort and a dog-like bark.

"It would serve them both right if we let them bring down the whole castle around them," Gorgon shouted loudly enough to be heard over the fighting below.

"But the box fell down there with them!" Medusa shouted. "And the guardsmen we brought on the invasion might be held elsewhere in the castle!"

Black Bolt caught Lockjaw's attention and pointed, first to Triton, and then to Medusa. Lockjaw understood at once and teleported himself and Triton to the more stable floor by Medusa. Then Black Bolt gave Medusa a look and a nod. After that, he jumped over the hole in the floor and plunged down through it.

"What does he want us to do?" Gorgon asked Medusa.

Answering was difficult, as it pained Medusa to think of the horrible gamble Black Bolt planned. "He wants us to deal with the two matters I brought up while he ...tackles Doom and Kang alone," she said.

Black Bolt dropped down into the lower floor and had no difficulty in spotting the two combatants – they had gutted out most of the interior walls in their battle. Kang had Doom held in some sort of field that corresponded to how Kang moved his gauntlet – so when Kang squeezed his hand, Doom appeared to be restrained in the air; when Kang raised his hand and slammed it down, Doom was slammed into the floor.

"Give up?" Kang asked.

"No!" Doom replied.

Black Bolt raced towards them too quickly for them to react. He snagged Doom's tattered cape in his left fist and barreled straight into Kang full-force. His momentum was enough to knock all three of them through the weakened outer wall of the building. What Black Bolt did not know – what he could not have known – was that they were on the sixth floor. As he tumbled out into open space, his first thought was for the safety of the two villains he had just put into freefall, but instead of reaching out to grab Black Bolt, Kang pushed him away back into the wall of the castle. Kang was clearly floating in place now, using some manner of unseen levitation. Doom fell a bit further while he tore the cape from his back and a rocket pack that had been hidden under it roared to life.

"Oh no you don't," Kang said as he pointed and a tiny missile sped from the fingertip of his glove. It tracked the heat of the jet pack, surpassed it easily for speed, and caused the pack to explode. Doom's armor suffered only light damage, but as the rocket sputtered out Doom frantically tried to bank hard back towards the castle. Kang floated down to intercept him, but Doom's momentum allowed him to return to the castle first and crash through a glass door on the third floor. Kang followed Doom back inside and Black Bolt was hot on Kang's heels. Neither of them was holding the box and Black Bolt feared they would both soon realize that and head back upstairs to where his cousins were still recovering.

Doom had crashed against the inside wall of an office – the uniformed officer stationed to that office still cringing behind his desk – before losing the last of his momentum. He turned around to see Kang hit the floor of the office running and running towards him. He reached for the cosmic-beam gun in his holster, as a full-intensity blast might overload Kang's circuits, but before he could fire his weapon he found his arm frozen in a hastily-aimed TK.

"You are in need of further discipline, old man," Kang said as a second face mask slid down from somewhere unseen over the first one. Kang's new mask was stiff and immobile over his features – and emanated waves of hard radiation. The waves broke against Doom's forcefield, but dashed the wall behind him. Kang shoved Doom through the opening.

They were now on a solar promenading around the open upper level of the throne room. The radiation kept Doom on the defensive and, like a schoolyard bully gone horribly wrong, Kang kept shoving Doom until Dr. Doom went through the railing and plummeted to the throne room floor below.

Before Kang could celebrate in any way, he fell forwards from Black Bolt crashing into him from behind. This time, Black Bolt expected it when Kang started floating again, so Black Bolt had flown in fast and started hammering Kang with his fists in mid-air. Kang's radioactive mask was still throwing out waves of hard radiation, but Black Bolt's punches were knocking Kang's face from side to side. A shield of hyper-excited electrons Black Bolt psychically generated to spare him from harm deflected the radiation in the short moments between punches. In this way did they slowly float to the throne room floor.

If Kang had been waiting until they landed to unleash his next weapon, he waited too long. Black Bolt was saving the majority of his psychic strength to release in his master blow. His fist, empowered by all that built-up energy, pushed against the flow of radiation, pushed through Kang's personal forcefield, and plowed straight into Kang's face. The radiation-spewing mask cracked and broke off bit by bit. Kang staggered back, stumbled, and fell over.

"Ow," Kang said, reaching up as if he could touch his face. "You may have broke my nose. I think there's blood pooling under my mask..."

Black Bolt looked over to check on Dr. Doom only to see that Doom was on his feet again and moving slowly towards the cosmic-beam gun he had dropped in mid-fall. Black Bolt was too drained from the master blow to fly towards the gun, but he still had strength and speed enough to run towards it and intercept it before Doom.

Instead of trying to reach it faster, Dr. Doom reacted by activating a button in the palm of his left gauntlet. Pointing that hand at Black Bolt, the Inhuman was hit by a high-frequency energy pulse that overwhelmed him with a sudden sensation of vertigo.

As the throne room seemed to tilt off-balance, Black Bolt tumbled off his feet and skidded on the marble floor, mere feet from the cosmic-beam gun.

Dr. Doom casually walked up to the gun and picked it up since both of his opponents were still on the floor. He then backed away from both of them, waving his weapon between them, as Doom retreated slowly to his throne. "I think I have had enough of the presence of both of you in my castle," he said as he used his free hand to pull open the arm of the throne and revealed a hidden control panel beneath. At the bidding of the controls, a large, red metal cylinder lined with rows of blinking yellow lights began to rise out of the floor. "My invincible robots are on their way to dispose of you," Doom said, "and thanks to my 'hypnoticon', you will not even resist."

The lights on the cylinder began to glow brighter and blink faster and Black Bolt felt, in the back of his mind, an urge to not resist anything that happened next to him. He looked over to see if Kang was being affected and saw that Kang had a pistol in his hand now.

Kang was firing some sort of energy ray at the "hypnoticon". In a minute, the machine was throwing showers of sparks in all directions and lights were going out all over the machine. "That was weak," Kang said as he was finally rising back to his feet. "Really, cliched to the point of being beneath you."

Black Bolt was not about to let Kang become the greater threat again. He leaped in too close and too fast for Kang to swing the pistol around to bear on him and gave an open-hand strike to Kang's arm that made Kang drop the pistol. Black Bolt dropped down, scooped up the pistol, and fired an energy ray across the room at Doom's throne – but Dr. Doom was sitting there now and his forcefield extended to it.

Heavy clanking footsteps could be heard coming from behind doors in the east and south walls.

"You've bought yourselves a moment's respite," Doom said, "and a chance to fight to the end. But the end has come. Oh, I suppose your armor may have some defensive trigger that will return you to the future before the robots kill you," he said, clearly towards Kang, "but when you are recovering in your far-flung future, you will have to look back and remember that on this day I proved myself your irrefutable master."

The door in the east wall and both doors in the south wall burst inwards as green-tinted robots with jack-o-lantern-like faces began to lumber into the throne room.

"And you forget," Kang shouted out for Doom's benefit, "that my time-ship can travel through both time _and_ space."

With a horrific rumble that drowned out the sound of the advancing robots, the north-facing, outside wall of the throne room began to crumble. In its place emerged a giant, white, spherical facade. Energy beams lanced out from multiple gun ports on the front of the giant time-ship and struck robot after robot. The robots continued to advance even as parts of them were being melted off by the ferocious barrage.

Black Bolt threw Kang's stolen pistol into the path of one of the energy beams and the explosion took out a single gun port. After that, Black Bolt found himself being grappled by a robot that was already missing an arm – completely sheared off at the shoulder by an energy beam. His electrically-enhanced strength still drained and slowly recharging, Black Bolt had only his natural strength to use to fight back with as the robot squeezed Black Bolt's right arm with incredible strength. At the risk of breaking his own arm, Black Bolt managed to twist the robot around so it was between him and the beams still erupting from the time-ship. One such beam struck the robot holding Black Bolt and began to melt it from back to front.

Kang's time-ship focused most of its attention on any robots approaching its master and, as Kang made his way towards the throne for another face-to-face confrontation with Doom, only a single robot had managed to crawl to reach him. The robot was torn in half, but its upper body had clambered up behind Kang and grasped his leg in a vice-like grip similar to the one holding Black Bolt. Kang answered it by teleporting the vibration ray rifle back into his hands from aboard his time-ship and blasting the weapon into the robot's face. The noise was akin to pushing a drillbit through steel.

Black Bolt saw a second robot – this one undamaged – advancing on him. His options seemed slim, but not so slim that he was willing to risk using his voice. Luckily, with a bright flash of light, he knew he had help. Lockjaw appeared, with Medusa standing next to him.

"Black Bolt!" she cried. "Lockjaw, protect!"

Lockjaw believed that a good defense was a strong offense. He turned his head sideways, clamped his mouth down around the approaching robot's midsection, lifted it into the air, and began to maul it like a ridiculously expensive chewtoy.

Black Bolt, finding enough of his strength had returned, tore the remains of his remaining robot off of him and slammed it on the ground in front of Lockjaw to enjoy next.

"Black Bolt," Medusa said, taking her king's face in her hands. "Gorgon is holding the box. It did not take us long to find it where Kang had dropped it. Once he was wide enough awake, it was not hard for Lockjaw to sense where our guardsmen were kept prisoner in the dungeons. Karnak and Gorgon are down there now, fighting their way back up with our freed guardsmen. Triton, I had Lockjaw teleport him to the nearby river where the water there will return his strength. And, of course, I asked Lockjaw to return here and teleport me to your side when all that was done. Black Bolt, look!"

Not a single robot was left standing in the throne room. The time-ship had fired its weapons one more time, this time at Doom's throne. Dr. Doom had jumped out of the chair in time, but now seemed to be once more at the mercy of Kang.

"Kang, stop!" Medusa cried out.

Kang was holding on to Dr. Doom, but both men seemed to teeter as if one were supporting the other. Their clothes, both meant to look regal in their own times, were now tattered and shredded. Their respective armors were both battered and broken, their weapons spent – it seemed Kang was getting his second wind so he could start punching Doom next when he stopped at the sound of Medusa's voice.

"Why?" Kang asked loudly, though he did not turn around to pose it.

"Don't you wonder what Dr. Doom has been hiding?"

There was a moment of silence from everyone, except for Lockjaw who kept chewing.

"She's right," Dr. Doom said weakly.

Kang dropped Dr. Doom as if with contempt, or perhaps he just did not have the strength to hold him any longer.

Medusa and Black Bolt walked towards the dais and the smoldering throne where Kang stood and Dr. Doom knelt. "Ask him something," Medusa continued. "Ask Doom something he should remember about your first meeting."

Kang seemed to think it over for a moment and then went along with it and said, "Describe the pharaoh's headdress I wore."

"I can't," Dr. Doom said.

"Doom has acted like the man we expect him to be in all ways," Medusa said, "except the uncertainty he shows whenever he has pretended to remember something the real Dr. Doom would."

"No, not a robot," Kang said. "Surely I could not have been fooled..." Savagely, Kang bent over Dr. Doom and tore at his mask, finally beating it off with his fist.

Medusa and Black Bolt did not know what face to expect, but Kang seemed surprised. No, he seemed flabberghasted. He stepped back and leaned against the wall for support.

"My name is Hauptmann," the man in Dr. Doom's armor said. "I was head technician in Victor Von Doom's testing division for several years when some of Dr. Doom's robots fetched me and took me to his secret lab. There, I read secret reports meant for no other eyes – that, back in 1969, Dr. Doom had tried to reach outer space with the Silver Surfer's powers and never come back. As part of a contingency plan of his, I would be made into his replacement. His brainwave patterns were overlaid on top of my own until I now have 16% of his genius. That is not enough to repair, let alone invent, all of Doom's inventions. Between what I could have taken from you and Kang, I would have replaced my entire armory and then some; though it was a dangerous game, as I knew Kang had no use for me and not the real Dr. Doom."

"Not the real Dr. Doom?" Kang echoed. "But – my future! My destiny!"

"Is our time capsule not so important to you now?" Medusa asked Kang boldly.

"Who cares for your stupid trinket?" Kang asked, holding his palm to his forehead and fretting fiercely. "Do you not see that my entire timeline could be unraveling as we speak? I have to make sure Doom left progeny behind to sire my ancestors!" With that, Kang the Conqueror disappeared. A minute later, the time-ship disappeared from the breach in the outside wall and then Kang was really gone.

"Now what of us, Hauptmann?" Medusa asked of the villain remaining.

Hauptmann had retrieved his mask and, with some effort, reattached it. He then struggled to his feet and tried to restore the grandiose air that had characterized him while impersonating Dr. Doom. "We tread a difficult stalemate now," he said. "I do not desire you to leave here alive with my secret, but my defenses are depleted and I am not in a position of advantage any longer. If I know anything of being Dr. Doom, it is to wait until the advantage is mine. So, leave my land if you dare with your people and your precious time box, but know that you share my secret at your future peril."

There seemed to be nothing more to be said. Black Bolt gestured for Lockjaw to join them. "Take us to the others. And then let's go home," Medusa said. And then, with a bright flash of light, the three Inhumans were gone and the man the world knew as Dr. Doom stood in a ruined throne room alone.

NEXT ISH: The time box opens! What will Black Bolt's message to the past be? Could it have anything to do with the Kree-Skrull War reaching Attilan? The Time Box Saga concludes with "Suddenly – the Super-Skrull!"


	9. Chapter 9

Suddenly – the Super-Skrull!

May 30, 1938.

Attilan. Great Refuge of the Inhumans.

Two hundred feet above it.

Prince Blackagar stood on the highest terrace in the royal palace. This was his favorite place to stand. From it, he had an excellent view of the city. He counted seven hovercraft zooming back and forth between the rooftops of the city. He watched the glass domes of the botanic gardens and wondered if his favorite flowers, the chrysanthemums, were in bloom. He could see the landing pad on the roof of the merchant guildhall and could see some of his fellow Inhumans, like ants in the distance, meeting up there by a jet plane.

Seeing the plane reminded Blackagar that he was not limited to standing on the terrace. There was one thing he liked to do better. So inspired, he spread his arms and waited for the breeze to catch the fan-like wings under the arms of his shirt. When it did, he thought about flying – and he floated into the air.

The feeling of flying through the air with nothing holding him up but his own thoughts was near-intoxicating and incredibly liberating, especially for someone who had spent the better part of his first 20 years confined to indoors. If he did not tire so much after too much flying, he was sure he would wish to fly all the time instead of being earthbound. Delighted by the rush to his senses, he sped up and closed his eyes to enjoy the air streaming past his face. He opened his eyes and rolled sideways through the air like a barrel until he almost made himself dizzy. A high-flying hovercraft buzzed a warning alarm as he flew dangerously close and then swooped up higher at the last moment.

He was over the city's amphitheater now and well over a hundred Inhumans were seated there for a play. From the scenery on stage and what Blackagar could hear of the dialog, he recognized the play as The Floating City, a particularly moving historical play about a civil war Attilan suffered over 2,000 years ago. He had read the play many times, but had never watched it performed up close. He dared not now. Were he moved by emotions to make a sound – no, the danger was too great. So he stayed up there in the sky, high above the play, circling around and trying to enjoy it from a safe distance.

Another flying Inhuman floated up past Prince Blackagar. He was a boy, younger than the young prince, but flew magnificently. He did not speak to the prince. Most did not, erroneously fearful that if they spoke to him that he might accidentally speak back, but this boy was at least not fearful of flying around the silent prince and they were soon doing loops around each other. Soon the boy tired of the game, though, and flew back down into the city. The prince remained high above it. Indeed, instead of following the boy, he only flew up higher.

From this perspective, Blackagar could see the entire city, the entire island on which it stood, and the seemingly endless Atlantic Ocean all around it. But it was not endless and humankind was finding faster ways to cross it all the time. His father, King Agon, was considering moving the city to a more remote location. It was far from the first time Attilan had been moved. The people of Attilan seemed to have a collective wanderlust that manifested itself every few hundred years. Blackagar wondered if he would miss the ocean and thought about his cousin, Triton, and how he would surely miss it.

The prince looked back down on the city, thought of the 9,839 other Inhumans who called it home, and suddenly felt very lonely. He swooped down back towards the royal palace. His favorite terrace was no longer empty. His mother, Queen Rynda stood there. He landed beside her, as gently as a bird landing on its perch.

"Oh, Black Bolt," she said, using the abbreviated form of his full name that was customary for informal greetings, "you did not have to stop on my account. You know I love watching you fly. If your brother could fly, I am sure he would not spend so long locked up in his laboratory."

Black Bolt saw the concern in his mother's face, but not for long as she pushed it away and beamed a happy smile at her older son. She spread her arms and stepped forward to hug him.

"You love Attilan, don't you, Black Bolt?" she asked rhetorically. "I know you'll make a good king someday."

January 20, 1972.

Attilan. Great Refuge of the Inhumans.

Two thousand meters above it.

The humans known as the Avengers had warned the Inhumans of a coming threat from space, but few had believed it until the spaceship showed up. Fully 400 feet long and just as wide in diameter counting the stabilizing fins, the monstrous spaceship had hovered over the city for a full hour. Though just a speck to the unaided eye, magnification revealed the front of the ship was saucer-shaped with two large, curved projections like mandibles or horns mounted atop it on either side of a central bubble. The other end of the ship consisted of an assembly of nine cylinders that looked like rockets arrayed around the huge fins.

Then it started firing energy weapons on the city below. The anti-missile shield over the city held for 30 minutes before it failed. The merchant guildhall was struck first, destroying its top floors. After that, interceptor missiles began to fly up from the city and stop the energy beams from reaching their targets, but this was a defensive move that could only last so long as the missile supply held out. Something would have to be done soon to take the offensive.

January 20, 1972. Twenty minutes earlier.

Attilan. Great Refuge of the Inhumans.

Within the city.

The Royal Family of the Inhumans were occupied during most of this time trying to figure out the source of this threat. Their earthbound enemies with access to advanced science included the Mandarin, Dr. Doom, and Kang the Conqueror. But there was one person who was all too possibly involved within their own walls – all too possible because he had brought alien invaders to the city once before.

Acutely aware of what he had lost the last time aliens came to Attilan, Black Bolt strode into his brother Maximus' room and shoved him against the far wall. Medusa had come as well, in case their kin and king needed interpreting, but Black Bolt's actions spoke clearly for him.

"Please, dear brother!" Maximus whimpered like a whipped dog as he slunk to the floor. "I had nothing to do with it! I have been a prisoner in my room, unable to use any technology - under your orders!"

Black Bolt picked him up, and Black Bolt looked like he was pulling his arm back for a punch when Medusa felt she should interrupt.

"Maximus is usually only so meek when his madness is full on him," Medusa said. "He could not have done this in such a state."

If a punch had been coming, Black Bolt did not throw it. Instead he tossed Maximus to the floor by his bed.

Medusa put her hand on Black Bolt's arm. "My liege," she said, gently, "we are wasting time here. We should prepare for what to do if the city's defenses should fail."

Black Bolt turned and stormed out of the room. Medusa took one look back at Maximus and then turned to follow Black Bolt.

Maximus laid still on the floor where he had been tossed until they were gone. Then he went, "Hehehehehe..."

January 20, 1972. Now.

Attilan. Great Refuge of the Inhumans.

Two thousand meters above it.

When Lockjaw arrived in a bright flash of light, Black Bolt, Medusa, Karnak, and Gorgon stood around him. They were clearly aboard the spaceship, apparently in some sort of empty cargo hold with sleek metal walls and an oddly-sloped ceiling.

"We must find our way to the bridge," Karnak said.

"But Lockjaw was supposed to take us to the crew," Medusa said. She turned and touched Lockjaw's huge, furry brow. "Did something deflect us here?" she asked the canine-like Inhuman.

Lockjaw only gave a quick growl in response before everyone could see a bright, flickering light coming from a narrow corridor off the hold. Before anyone could do anything else, an orange figure burning with yellow flame flew into the room leaving a trail of yellow flame behind him. The form was unmistakable to all present.

"The Human Torch!" Gorgon exclaimed.

"Boy, am I glad to see you guys!" the Human Torch said. It was the first English any of them had heard in many months. At least they all knew it. "The rest of the FF are upstairs, but we could sure use some help!"

Medusa tried to read the Human Torch's face, but staring at those features was exactly like staring into a bright fire. "John, is Crystal with you?" she asked.

"Sure, she's upstairs too!" the Human Torch said as he circled around them. "C'mon, back the way I came!"

Gorgon was the first to follow and Black Bolt and Karnak both took a step forward before they noticed Medusa and Lockjaw stayed where they were. "...I don't think we can trust him," Medusa said hesitantly.

The Human Torch sighed. "Can a hunter not be allowed to toy with his prey?" he asked with a mix of anger and frustration. Then white hot flame began to pour forth from the fiery nimbus around him, flooding the whole chamber in seconds. "Fine!" he yelled over the roar of the fire. "Then I will have the pleasure instead of seeing you five reduced to charred husks when the fire subsides!"

The fire did quickly subside, at the mental bidding of the one who had brought it into existence. Then, suddenly, the Super-Skrull was surprised enough that he swore in his alien tongue. "What is this?" he yelled as he flew over to the large, cone-shaped object that now sat where the five intruders had just been. He reduced the flames covering his gloved right hand and ran it over the substance of the cone. It did not feel like anything. "Rraaaahhh!" he roared as his gloved fist turned into a huge fist of orange stone and smashed the cone. The cone broke apart and disintegrated from the impact, but was empty inside. Only a hole punched through the floor gave an indication as to where they had gone.

January 20, 1972.

Attilan. Great Refuge of the Inhumans.

Two thousand meters above it, minus one level.

Gorgon's stomp had opened the way to some sort of access tunnel under the hold. The floor of the tunnel had a ladder fixed to it, suggesting the gravitational orientation of the tunnel was not always as it was now. Black Bolt only ran five meters through the tunnel before he had to slow down and lean against the tunnel wall. Medusa immediately noticed and grabbed hold of Black Bolt's arm.

"Do not push yourself too hard," Medusa whispered to Black Bolt. "Solid energy constructs drain your power too much."

Black Bolt turned a weak smile to Medusa before he was knocked down to his knees by an unseen force crashing down on his left shoulder.

"Kree-spawned scum!" came a gravelly voice from nearby, speaking in English. "Your masters will never find you alive when they reach this mudball world!"

Medusa could hear the voice coming towards her. She pushed her voluminous hair in every direction in front of her, filling the tunnel until she could see the form of something big, but invisible moving through it. She tried to close her hair around the form and hold it fast, but it pushed through her hair like it was nothing. It swung to strike her, but Black Bolt struck first. He was back on his feet now and punched their invisible foe hard enough to knock it off-balance. The foe recovered fast and punched back, hitting Black Bolt hard enough to knock him into the side of the tunnel and leave a deep, man-shaped dent.

"The Kree are not our masters!" Medusa said, hoping to reason with their foe.

Suddenly, the Super-Skrull became visible. Under his tight purple and black uniform his body seemed a caricature of human proportions, with muscles swelling on top of muscles and his barrel chest so massive he seemed to teeter over Medusa. Worst of all was his green face, misshapen like rotten fruit and utterly alien. Even to an Inhuman used to seeing physical mutations amongst her own people, this visage was almost too repugnant to look at. Yet look at it she did, bravely staring back into those large, colorless eyes to distract their attacker until Black Bolt could recover his strength. Those eyes...those hypnotic eyes...

"Where are the others?" the Super-Skrull asked Medusa.

"They teleported to the bridge," Medusa said honestly, unable to resist the hypnosis.

The Super-Skrull swore in his alien tongue again and then blazed into flame. Medusa's hair was badly singed, but she fell back in time to avoid worse damage. The fiery alien rocketed away from them down the tunnel until it reached an upwards-facing tunnel and turned into it. The light from the fire faded quickly as the Super-Skrull disappeared into the depths of his ship.

"Come on," Medusa said, grabbing Black Bolt's arm. "We must follow him quickly!"

January 20, 1972. One minute ago.

Attilan. Great Refuge of the Inhumans.

Two thousand meters above it, three levels higher, on the other side of the ship.

Gorgon, Karnak, and Lockjaw looked around what, according to Lockjaw, was the bridge of the ship. There were huge monitors on half the curved wall space and half of those monitors were fixed on the city of Attilan below. Other screens were focused on what looked to be deep space, one showing the Moon, another showing a human city that appeared to be New York City, and the last showing what appeared to be another room in the spacecraft where three brightly-garbed humans were held upright in restraints with their heads slumped forward. Below the monitors were banks of switches, buttons, and dials with just four bowl-shaped, backless chairs before the control banks.

"What do I start smashing? That will not make us explode?" Gorgon asked with frustration.

"And who are those three people?" Karnak asked, pointing to the one monitor. "Are not two of them Avengers?"

Lockjaw walked up to a chair and started chewing on it. It was no longer recognizable as a chair within seconds.

"Do your senses tell you where we should strike to do the most damage?" Gorgon asked Karnak.

Karnak looked carefully over the bridge and waited for a flash of intuition. Instead, they were interrupted by a circular door sliding open in the floor. No one seemed to be on the other side, but it did immediately become intensely hot in the room.

"We are being attacked!" Karnak said.

"I feel like I am going to burn up!" Gorgon said, pulling his shirt from his chest to let air in.

Lockjaw howled loudly.

Before anyone could spontaneously combust, Black Bolt flew through the opening in the floor. He crashed into the Super-Skrull hard enough to make him lose his concentration. The temperature came down in the room and the Super-Skrull turned visible.

While the Super-Skrull turned his attention to grappling with Black Bolt, Gorgon decided there was nothing left to do but start kicking things. He let fly with one of his hooves and smashed in the side of an entire bank of controls.

"You insufferable vermin!" the Super-Skrull hollered between trading punches with Black Bolt. His left arm stretched out across the room, yanked Gorgon off his hooves, and pulled the Inhuman across the room towards Black Bolt.

By now, though, Medusa had caught up and used her blackened hair to cushion the impact for Gorgon and spare Black Bolt the collision.

"I have dallied too long," the Super-Skrull said. "My prisoners are needed elsewhere. All I have sought here is the destruction of your city and that I shall still accomplish." With that, the Super-Skrull gave Black Bolt a left hook and stretched his right arm to reach a control switch across the room.

Black Bolt was biding his time with lesser blows while he waited for his power to recharge enough for his master blow, but the lesser blows were doing little more than distracting the Super-Skrull and the alien still managed to shout something in his alien tongue.

"Command sequence is engaged!" the Super-Skrull bragged loudly. He took Black Bolt's head in both hands and head-butted him in the face. "There's no stopping it now!" he continued to rant. "And did you really think only Earth in all the cosmos has atomic weapons?"

An alarm was ringing across the bridge. On the other side of the room, Karnak had decided which control bank needed smashing. He swung his open hand into the metal console and ruptured it, sinking his hand into the more breakable mechanisms inside.

The lights dimmed on the bridge. There seemed to be no other effect, but the Super-Skrull howled with rage. "My cosmic rays!" he shouted angrily. "How did you know?"

While the Super-Skrull was distracted, Gorgon kicked him from behind and sent him flying across the room. "Not so tough all of a sudden?" Gorgon shouted defiantly, not even having guessed the full truth behind the empowering machine Karnak had just wrecked.

Medusa, having picked herself up after saving Gorgon, turned to Black Bolt. "Hurry!" she said loudly over the blaring alarm. "While we distract him, you must go back and save Attilan! You know what you have to do!"

Black Bolt gave her a grave look and then, deciding she was right, ran to Lockjaw's side.

"Take him to the box!" Medusa yelled before, in a flash, Lockjaw and Black Bolt were gone.

January 20, 1972. One second later.

Attilan. Great Refuge of the Inhumans.

The Time Box had been locked inside a cabinet inside the ancestor shrine within the palace. Black Bolt tore open the cabinet with his hands and reached his gloved hands inside for the box. He hesitated for an instant, but then he pulled at the lid and found it opened easily.

January 20, 1972. One second later.

Attilan. Great Refuge of the Inhumans.

Two thousand meters above it.

Though Medusa, Gorgon, and Karnak were keeping the Super-Skrull busy on the bridge, a single missile had just exited the hull of the ship through a tube. The missile carried an atomic payload greater than any nuclear warhead yet created by man. And it fell earthward, straight toward the city of Attilan below.

January 20, 1972. Half a second later.

Attilan. Great Refuge of the Inhumans.

The world was bathed in white light all around Black Bolt. Even though the light was omni-directional, he could somehow tell it was coming from inside the box. He was also aware, though he did not know how, that his mind was being scanned. His life seemed to be rewinding in his mind, past the fight with the Super-Skrull, back before the battle with Dr. Doom, and as it rewound it moved faster and faster. He recognized no events being replayed for the mind scanner until it seemed to pause at one.

And then he was a young man again, standing on his favorite terrace, listening to his mother ask him, "You love Attilan, don't you, Black Bolt?"

Outside the city, a black shape began to form. The Inhumans below panicked in the streets, thinking it another attack from above. The black shape spread quickly and curved downward, as if forming a gigantic dome over the city. Above it, the Super-Skrull's missile hurtled down lower and lower until it struck the black dome – and was completely absorbed into it. A moment later there was a deafening boom and a terrific shockwave as the black dome dissipated faster than it appeared, but there was no destruction. No death. No radioactivity in the air.

Above the city, the spaceship roared to life and rocketed up higher into the sky until it disappeared from view. Before it left, Lockjaw had returned and retrieved Medusa, Gorgon, and Karnak from the battle. On their return to the city they sought out their king and found him, kneeling on the floor before the shrine, a familiar and once again closed stone box sitting before him. Silent tears fell from Black Bolt's eyes.

"Black Bolt," Gorgon said softly. "We are all right. We won!"

Medusa knelt beside Black Bolt and held him, no words needing to be said between them.

"I think I understand why he weeps," Karnak said, feeling he knew his king's mind as well as if he possessed Medusa's gift. "Our ancestors have waited 4,000 years for the future to look bright enough for our people that the Time Box would no longer be needed. Why have we come so little in so long a time?"

The question hung heavy in the air.

NEXT ISH: Lighter stuff! Crystal comes home to visit! More on what Maximus was chuckling about! Don't miss "Homecoming"!


	10. Chapter 10

"Homecoming"

February 12, 1972.

Attilan, the Great Refuge of the Inhumans.

Communications room of the Royal Palace.

Medusa, dressed in purple tights, sat in front of the large television screen. She turned a knob with her gloved hand to boost the reception. The signal from New York City was weak at this range, even if the Avengers did have access to Reed Richards' advanced human technology. She now saw the masked face of the Avenger called Hawkeye much more clearly and could hear him better as well.

"What was that last part you said?" Medusa asked.

"The main armada of the Kree is here," Hawkeye said, "or at least halfway between Earth and Mars, massing in formation."

"You warned us about the Kree months ago, but all we have observed is activity from the Skrulls," Medusa said.

"The Skrulls already had advance scouts here on Earth – had them here for 10 years right under our noses. Well, we're way past having to worry about scouts and stray raiding parties – this is it. Turns out, the Skrulls have showed up with their own armada and they're going to have an old-fashioned shootout with our planet right in the middle of it!"

"We have already pledged most of our royal guard to your cause, Hawkeye," Medusa said.

"Your majesty, or whatever I'm supposed to call ya," Hawkeye said, his speech becoming sloppier as he grew angrier, "if I wanted guards, I could'a called the Queen of England and got me some beefeeders. What we need is the Royal Family here pronto!"

Hawkeye was pushed by someone from in front of the camera and then a red-headed woman appeared in front of it. "Princess Medusa," the redhead said, "I am Black Widow. What Hawkeye is trying to say is that we need Black Bolt's power closer to our front lines."

"I must confess I am confused by who represents the Avengers," Medusa said. "Where is Spider-Man?"

"Spider-Man stepped down as chairman," Hawkeye said from off-camera. "I'm chairman now."

"Regardless," Medusa continued, "we have trouble of our own. If you have not been in contact with your own Fantastic Four recently, let me be the one to tell you that Crystal is missing and Lockjaw has been missing since he went to find her. Karnak has been seeking her out and the rest of us will soon be joining him in the search."

"That's crazy!" Hawkeye was saying off-camera, but the Black Widow was hushing him.

"Please reconsider, Medusa," the Black Widow said. "Without everyone working together, Earth may not endure. This is not hyperbole – this is our worst-case scenario."

"I will speak to Black Bolt again on this matter," Medusa said. "I can promise no more. Medusa out," and she cut her transmission with the turn of a dial.

February 12, 1972. Five minutes later.

Attilan, the Great Refuge of the Inhumans.

Launching pad of the Royal Palace.

The flying craft on the pad resembled no human contrivance. It was an assembly of five spheres of aluminum, both super-dense and transparent, attached like spokes to a central propulsion unit. Each sphere had a bank of controls around a chair. Four of the spheres were already inhabited and outside the fifth was an Inhuman, standing six foot, eight inches tall and unnaturally thin, but wearing powered armor that increased his bulk. Next to him, clad in brown leather, was Gorgon of the Royal Family, who watched the taller man about to enter the ship.

"I envy you, Danse," Gorgon said.

Danse, Sergeant-of-the-Guard, turned around to face his superior officer and friend. "Gorgon? Do you wish to go in my stead?"

"Don't tempt me. I would if Black Bolt had not forbade it and I would not disobey him for any amount of glory in battle."

Danse smiled. "I will let a few of the Kree devils slip past me so you can have some fun too," he said.

Gorgon smiled back and clasped Danse on the arm. "If you don't leave me at least a dozen, I am demoting you on your return. Now go on, join the others."

Danse nodded and entered the ship. The propulsion unit hummed to life and glowed before the ship lifted up off the ground and hovered still in the air. Gorgon stepped back, turned his back to his guardsmen, and walked away. From behind him he heard the deep, bass "boom" of the impulse engine as it kicked in and quickly lifted the ship far into the sky. The last ship heading into the orbital defense line around Earth was gone now and Gorgon had missed his last chance to participate. With a heavy sigh and a slouch in his shoulders he started along the balcony that ran around the transportation building with no destination in mind. Then he spotted Medusa down on the ground below, walking briskly on the moving sidewalk to double her speed. He had a sudden surge of hope that she might have news from Black Bolt of a change of heart.

"Medusa, wait!" he bellowed. He quickened his pace until he reached the pneumatic elevator, stepped in on the compressed air, and with a press of a button was lowered to the ground. "Medusa, wait!" Gorgon repeated as he emerged from the elevator shaft.

Medusa had long since spotted the source of her cousin's distressed voice, stepped off the moving sidewalk, and waited in the courtyard. "Gorgon! Is anything wrong?"

"There is plenty wrong," Gorgon said with a grimace, "if you count the fact that we are still here on the ground instead of in the sky."

Medusa sighed. "I cannot entirely argue with you."

"Crystal may be our youngest kin," Gorgon went on ranting, "but she is 38 years old now and she should be able to take care of herself. And Lockjaw-"

"Gorgon," Medusa said, putting her hand gently to his lips, "this is not about Crystal and Lockjaw. It's about Black Bolt."

Gorgon looked at her for a moment before he managed to get out, "Eh?"

"This is about Black Bolt and how important family is to him. Do you remember when Maximus took over and exiled us from Attilan? Being driven from Attilan was an excrutiating blow to Black Bolt, but at least he had us, his first and second cousins. No crisis, not even an alien invasion, is more frightening to him than losing the Royal Family. And can you blame him? His parents are dead and his brother is mad. We are all the family he has left. I am sure that if he trusted to leave Maximus here in Attilan virtually unguarded, we would all have left by now to find Crystal and Lockjaw."

Before either of them could say another word, they beheld a bright flash of light from the open courtyard where they stood. Turning, they saw the familiar shapes of Lockjaw and Crystal taking form before them.

"Am I the one you would have been looking for?" Crystal asked. She was wearing her old, favorite yellow outfit instead of a Fantastic Four uniform as they had seen her in last time she was back home.

"Yes, you!" Medusa cried as she ran to hug her younger sister.

"Lockjaw, were you being lazy in your mission?" Gorgon asked crossly, arms crossed before him.

Lockjaw snorted back at him.

"It was not Lockjaw's fault!" Crystal interjected. "We were both prisoners of Diablo and would be still had it not been for John."

"Where is your husband?" Medusa asked at the mention of John Storm.

"Gone with the rest of the Fantastic Four to face the Kree and Skrull armadas. I would have gone with them, but I understood all of Attilan was worried about us so we had to come back to tell everyone we are alright now."

"Then let us tell Black Bolt as well," Medusa said, grabbing her sister's wrist with a long tendril of hair. "He will be elated at the news!"

Medusa set a brisk pace, with Crystal forced to keep up and Gorgon and Lockjaw trailing behind. They had not cleared much of the palace grounds, however, when Gorgon pointed skyward and announced, "Look! We will not have to wait long to tell him after all!"

All eyes looked up to see their king, Black Bolt, soaring over the rooftops. The black-garbed monarch spotted the small party on the steps to the Hall of Genetics and angled his flight to circle down to them. He shortly landed in front of Crystal and gave his second cousin a sudden embrace. Releasing her, he knelt down next to Lockjaw and hugged his huge, furry muzzle. Although she had always known Black Bolt to be a caring kinsman, Crystal was closest to being surprised by this outburst of feeling, having been away from Attilan the longest and unaware of the recent stresses put on their king and kin.

"Black Bolt," Medusa said, "let us all find comfortable seats indoors, as I am sure we have many stories to trade with Crystal."

February 12, 1972. Twenty minutes later.

Attilan, the Great Refuge of the Inhumans.

Private chamber of the Royal Palace.

"I can't believe it!" Crystal said with a laugh, throwing her head back into her comfy chair.

"It's true," Gorgon said, sitting across from her. "You missed it both times."

"Yes..." Medusa said, sounding embarrassed. Her hair started to move as if on its own accord to cover the blush in her cheeks. "First cut off by Dr. Doom and then singed off by the Super-Skrull – I've been forced to wear my hair short, twice in the last two months. Luckily it grows back very fast."

Word had been sent to Triton and Karnak about Crystal and Lockjaw's return, but only Triton was close enough to Attilan to join them now. He rushed from the doorway towards Crystal and she stood up to receive his hug. Then Triton gave Lockjaw a playful scratch on the head. "We were all worried!" Triton said to Crystal. "I thought I told John it was going to be his job to protect you once you two were married!"

"Oh, I save him more often than he saves me," Crystal said, waving off his concerns with her gloved hand.

"This reunion is all well and good," Gorgon said, standing up, "but we have delayed long enough in dealing with the Kree threat. Now that we are reunited, should we not fetch Karnak and go join with the palace guard as they wait in high orbit for the coming attack?"

"The Avengers are clearly convinced that our chances are bleak," Medusa said from where she sat. "The armadas assembled in space must be huge."

Black Bolt, sitting where he could see everyone, looked every member of his family in the eye one by one. In Gorgon, he saw pride, and a potentially self-destructive lust for honor in battle. In Triton, he saw a grim, fatalistic determination to see through whatever came to him. In Medusa, he saw a deep love and her willingness to go anywhere he lead her. Only Crystal averted her gaze. Some new pain lurked beneath the surface she tried hard to conceal with her happy face of old. Finally, Black Bolt stood. All eyes turned to him. He looked to Medusa, pointed to himself, and then pointed up towards the ceiling.

"What of the rest of us?" Medusa said, rising from her seat. Her hair moved restlessly, but it was with her hand that she reached out for Black Bolt.

"You can't mean for us to stay?" Gorgon asked, clearly as upset as Medusa, though not necessarily for the same reason.

Black Bolt let Medusa read his features, but he made a sign with his fingers for the others to recognize.

"Maximus," Triton said coldly. "You want us to stay and keep an eye on Maximus. I have to say, it is the logical thing, with the ranks of the palace guard now so depleted."

Black Bolt finally let Medusa take his hand and he said things to her with his eyes that almost brought tears to hers. Then he motioned with his other hand to Gorgon and Triton, meaning for them to follow as he let go of Medusa's hand and moved to the exit of the room.

Medusa assumed Black Bolt had left her to stay behind so she could catch up longer with her sister, but when she looked into Crystal's eyes she saw the pain there that Black Bolt had seen. "Little sister, what's the matter?" Medusa asked sweetly, like she might have 20 years ago when Crystal was still a girl. She opened her arms, offering herself for a hug.

Crystal lost all composure and rushed into Medusa's arms, crying. "Oh, Medusa," she said. "The things I did…the things Diablo made me do when I was under his spell…"

Medusa held her sister and tried to feel calm and peaceful for Crystal to sense. Medusa repressed, for now, her burning desire for revenge on this Diablo for reducing her sister to tears.

There was one other person present in the room, though no one had known. He desired to stay longer and see if Crystal had any juicy details to confess, but knew he had a timetable to meet and could not linger longer. Protected from being seen or heard by the cloaking device he held, Maximus left the room, ranting out loud continuously. "You overthrow your brother once and he never stops suspecting you of things! Grrawl! Diablo was a fool to parade Crystal around until the Fantastic Four took notice. He was supposed to keep her prisoner until the rest of the Royal Family split up to go find her! But no, that's what I get for trusting a thousand-year old Spaniard! Now I need to rely on plan B. Good thing I had a plan B!" By now, Maximus had left the palace grounds and was heading for a meeting hall that should have been empty. Maximus expected otherwise. He continued ranting with, "But this is better. Far more ironic!" He produced an electronic skeleton key and unlocked the door. "The fools, thinking I couldn't invent anything because they'd taken away my tools. Little did they suspect I could create a long-range communicator with a gravy bowl, a spool of floss, and an old tape recorder. Where was I?" he prompted himself as he opened the door and entered. "Oh yes! The irony of being captured by her old comrades-in-arms – the Frightful Four!" That last part he had said in English with a flourish, after turning off his cloaking device and entering the room adjoining the foyer to find the four men he had expected.

They were four men, anyway. One was wearing a suit of green-painted chainmail armor and a helmet that covered his entire head. Another was wearing what looked like a purple rubber suit from head-to-toe with zig-zag patterns all over it. The third was wearing an even more bizarre green outfit with a leaf-motif all over it. The fourth was a moustached man wearing a green "business suit" as humans called them, but also a pair of over-sized mechanical gauntlets.

"Who are you?" Maximus asked. "Where are the Frightful Four?"

"That would be us," said the man in green armor. "You might have heard of me as the Asbestos Man, but now I go by a new name – Chemistopheles. My companions in crime are Eel, Plantman, and Rabble-Rouser."

Maximus looked at each of them in turn and then back at Chemistopheles. "You're who now? Which of you is the Wizard?"

The four supervillains turned and looked at each other awkwardly before their appointed spokesman continued. "Your information is slightly out-of-date. The Wizard has retired. The Frightful Four is now a franchise operation. We are the current franchise holders."

"It wasn't easy, finding your secret city and sneaking into it, you know," Plantman added.

"Fine," Maximus said. "You know – it's fine. My plan is so perfect, even this can't set me back."

"And what plan is that? Also we'd like to discuss payment," Chemistopheles said.

"Oh, you will be richly rewarded," Maximus said. "After you kidnap Medusa!"

NEXT ISH: This is the BIG one! Flashbacks to the birth of Black Bolt and the death of his parents! Black Bolt in space fighting in the Kree-Skrull War! Medusa under attack from the new Frightful Four! Crystal in action! Surprise guest-stars! Don't miss "Attacks at home and abroad!"


	11. Chapter 11

"Attacks at Home and Abroad"

By Scott Casper (with thanks to Roy Thomas for the second scene)

October 3, 1918.

Attilan. Hall of Genetics.

King Agon and Queen Rynda had declared today a holiday for all Inhumans. All were ordered by royal decree to celebrate the birth of the royal couple's first child. Few had needed encouraging, for births approved by the Genetics Council were rare and the king and queen had waited 49 years for this blessed event.

Four and a half months ago, Rynda's role in the birthing process had ended when the baby was surgically removed and placed in an incubation tank, as was the normal custom. Six months into the baby's incubation, it was exposed to Terrigen Mist, the substance that allowed the geneticists to control the tendency for random mutation in Inhuman genes. This too was the normal custom. When King Agon had been told that his son-to-be tested positive for sonic-based mutation, Agon proudly commanded the geneticists to give his son a voice that was loud and commanding, so that all the people of Attilan could hear it.

Now both parents waited patiently while the geneticists ran final tests. The length of the tests was not the normal custom and both father and mother were growing more concerned by both their length and the look on the faces of the geneticists analyzing the results.

Finally, King Agon could take it no more. "Report," he commanded. "Tell us, is anything wrong?"

"No. Well, not that we can say," the lead geneticist on the team, an Inhuman with a bulbous, crusty forehead responded warily. "Some results are showing sonic-based powers well beyond the scope of what we anticipated."

Agon's chest swelled and he had to suppress a toothy grin in order to continue the conversation with a serious tone. "That is wonderful news, is it not? We want a powerful son."

"Yes…but, we're anticipating a power rating of approximately nine."

"At what age?"

"Now."

"Now?" Agon said, his visible signs of happiness and pride replaced with signs of worry and concern.

Rynda, too, took two steps forward to stand by her husband's side and hold his arm. "Is there any precedent for this?" Rynda asked.

"Not that our records indicate," the geneticist answered. "Since we will not have a better sense of his powers until the birthing process is complete, we advise sedating the infant within the incubation tank."

"An unconscious delivery?" Agon said. Since he was both head geneticist and king, he understood the procedure was not too unordinary and the risks were minimal. "Fine. Do it."

Extra scientists were called into the delivery chamber at the fateful hour. Both king and queen stayed on hand – this time not just as expecting parents, but as two of the extra scientists.

Rynda watched the readings on the health monitors most closely. "The sedatives have taken," she determined. "Baby is asleep," she added with feigned detachment. In truth, she and Agon had mostly decided on a name for the baby already, but now seemed the wrong time for officially naming him.

"All systems are optimal," Agon declared. "Begin the birthing process."

At the press of buttons, mechanical functions within the incubation chamber stirred to life. The synthetic embryonic fluid, clearly visible through the glass viewing window, began to bubble and the baby began to rise to the top of the chamber. An orifice at the top of the machine opened and mechanical arms ending in soft, rubber scoops descended into the goop inside. A moment later, the baby emerged into the open air, still covered in goo.

"Power level is rising," a geneticist observed. "It just passed 8.9."

"Continue automated delivery to the baby basket," Agon said. The baby basket, lined with padding and softer than soft, was also bristling with sensors that would give them a better sense of what the baby's powers were.

And in that moment, the baby woke up. And cried.

All the glass in the room shattered. Ears bled. Balances were lost and scientists tumbled to the floor one after another, clutching their ears. The world seemed full of sound for that one minute and then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the sound dropped in volume by half. Rynda had somehow managed to defy vertigo and flying glass and reach her infant. As soon as it was in her arms the baby's crying had softened to a bearable level.

A less caring geneticist took it upon himself to jab a syringe full of sedative into the infant and it fell asleep in Rynda's arms. Other geneticists, having recovered, swarmed over the baby and wrested it from her grasp. The baby was put in the basket and then everyone rushed back to what monitors were still working to read the initial scan results.

"Thank God you acted when you did, Liebrum," Agon told the fast-acting geneticist. He stared at the power gage as it continued to climb. "He is already at 9.1 and does not look like it will stop there."

"Our baby," Rynda said, tearing up. "Little Blackagar. It may never be safe to hear him speak!"

January 15, 1939.

Attilan.

It started as a pleasant enough evening for the young prince. Blackagar Boltagon, known as Black Bolt by all, was strolling through the Great Refuge when he spotted a strange light descending out of the sky. Curious, he followed it to what should have been a deserted portion of the city. As he approached an open doorway, he could hear voices from within. One voice spoke in Tilanese, but with an accent unlike any Black Bolt had ever heard used before in Attilan. The other voice was all too familiar – the voice of his own brother, Maximus.

"—it is agreed, Maximus?" the stranger's voice asked, his voice echoing in the large chamber within. "When our party has control of the Kree Empire and if you have the throne of your people by then…"

"Then shall we be allies," Maximus said. "As my people benefited from your interference in Earth's history eons ago, so shall you now benefit by making my people your vice-regents of Earth."

Black Bolt's blood boiled at these traitorous words. He raced through the doorway, heedless of what danger might wait on the other side. There he saw, in the roofless chamber, a saucer-shaped vessel atop a giant tripod. Maximus and two blue-skinned aliens were standing by a ramp and stairs leading up into the large vessel, while two Inhuman guardsmen loyal to Maximus watched.

First Black Bolt charged the two traitorous guardsmen – though neither was so traitorous as to bring the energy rifles in their hands to bear against the firstborn prince of their people. Black Bolt shoved them out of his way as he made straight for Maximus. The guards lost their nerve when it came to challenging the firstborn prince and they fled the chamber.

"You fool!" Maximus shouted at Black Bolt. "In an entire city, how did you happen to just come across us? Go at once!" he now shouted at the Kree agents, shoving them onto the ramp. "You have neither the weapons nor defenses to deal with my brother! Leave him to me! Return to your empire with my pledge! I'll—oof!"

By now, Black Bolt had cleared the distance between them and landed on Maximus with a flying tackle. The Kree agents either had orders to avoid contact with other Inhumans or saw the anger in Black Bolt's eyes and sought refuge from it. Regardless, Maximus wrestled alone with his older brother. Black Bolt had the superior strength, but Maximus' psionic powers were stronger than Black Bolt knew and a wave of mental energy swept over Black Bolt and made his limbs feel heavy and sluggish.

"Ha! I can feel your loathing, my dear sibling!" Maximus mocked with sarcasm. "How you would love to curse me if you only dared speak!" Maximus managed to get a foot up between them and kicked Black Bolt back, but Black Bolt caught the foot, spun Maximus around, and tossed him so that Maximus tumbled across the smooth, metal floor.

Black Bolt grabbed Maximus by the cape he wore and pulled him up to his feet so Black Bolt could punch him in the face. He barely noticed that the landing ramp had been raised back into the Kree ship. He only heard Maximus' barbed words as he continued to mock his brother even between increasingly harder punches.

"Oh, Black Bolt, so strong! Mother always thinks so much of your strength, your self-restraint! If she could just see you now, beating on your only brother! Maybe you should help the Kree assassinate our parents now so they'll never have to see what a monster you're capable of becoming!"

At the words "assassinate our parents", Black Bolt's anger turned entirely away from Maximus to the aliens. Only now did he notice that the ship had silently levitated out of the room and to the open sky above. Since he was an infant, Black Bolt had been trained never to speak. Not a word had ever escaped his lips since he learned how to speak. But now, in a moment of uncontrollable fury, he clutched Maximus to his side and turned his face skyward as he whispered, "NO."

For a moment, the City of Attilan was lit up like it was midday. The sonic explosion annihilated the building in which Black Bolt and Maximus stood. In its final moments, though,the building's durable walls had acted as a funnel projected the sonic energy skyward and sparing the surrounding city. The Kree saucer had not been spared. Its forcefield was overloaded, as was every device on board the ship, and its hull was severely breached. In the span of a heartbeat, the technological achievement of an alien empire a hundred times more advanced than mankind was no more than a chunk of debris hurtling end over end up into the sky. So vertical was its ascent that, after it reached its apex, it descended back into the city.

Black Bolt's anger was spent in that moment. His heart had felt like it was on fire, but now it felt frozen in his chest. He stared out onto the city through space where the building had once stood around him and determined that the wreckage of the ship had fallen into the very heart of the city. Forgetting Maximus entirely, he willed himself to fly into the air for a better perspective. He was terrified of what destruction he would see, but his worse fears did not prepare him for what he saw when he was high enough. The bright fires that could only be the location of the downed alien vessel were right in the royal compound. Now that he had seen this much he was desperate to see more and he flew towards the royal compound faster than he had ever flown before.

The ship had crashed into the Hall of Genetics with such force that the building was in no better shape than the ship had been. Inhumans swarmed around the site, containing the fires that had broke out both in and around the great hall. By the light of the fires, Black Bolt saw one welcome sight – the red hair of Medusa. He landed by her and she immediately threw herself into his arms.

"Oh, Black Bolt! I'm so sorry!" Medusa sobbed. When she read from Black Bolt's tenseness that he was confused she pulled back and forced herself to tell him the terrible news about where his father and mother were just a few moments earlier.

February 26, 1972.

Exosphere, 310 miles miles above Earth.

Nine ships hovered in formation, each no more than a quarter-mile from the ones around them, on the highest layer of Earth's atmosphere while the planet rotated slowly beneath them. Far below them now was Iraq and the region known as the human cradle of civilization. Each ship was different from the one next to it, for the Inhumans never mass-produced, but crafted each vessel as if a unique work of art. Yet here, in this region of cold, lonely upper atmosphere, there was no one to appreciate them or their presence. On the other side of the world, 14 human men and women called superheroes were leaving the exosphere in their own vessels, heading to meet the Skrull armada head-on. Fourteen against tens of thousands. And here the odds were only slightly less bleak - 44 Inhumans and one human charged with delaying the Kree armada from reaching Earth.

"Nothing on my long-range scanner yet," reported Danse.

"Not likely to be," Haruwood said. "The scanners have a maximum range of 1,600 miles. We'll see them first if you boost your visual monitor to the highest magnification."

Everyone adjusted their visual monitors and watched the darkness between the stars. A long, quiet moment passed.

"The Earth is beautiful from up here," Lares mused out loud. "Do you suppose the humans would appreciate that Inhumans are saving them?"

"We are myths to them," Starborg said over the radio from his own ship. "Humans don't appreciate myths except in stories."

"That is only what you have heard," Lares countered. "You never talked to a human before Richards here."

"Then, on behalf of the human race, let me share my appreciation for what you are all doing here," said Reed Richards, the man whom the world at large knew as Mr. Fantastic, over the radio from the Inhuman vessel he was aboard. "But don't think for a moment we have time for idle conversation. When the attack comes, it will be swift and brutal. We must be ready."

"I think I see something..." Danse said hesitantly "Confirm?"

"I am not sure either," Haruwood said. "Whatever that speck is, it must be hundreds of thousands of miles away."

"No, it's getting closer – fast!" Richards said.

"Engage force screen, all ships!" Danse ordered.

No one could see the Kree ships yet, but out of the blackness of space, three streaks of light were coming straight at them. Everyone hastily worked switches on their dashboards. Between the ships sprang up a wall of shimmering, solidly-packed photons, connecting each ship to each other. Then this force screen moved forward in front of the ships. It would serve as a poor shield for Earth, being only a square half-mile on each side, akin to a man holding up a thimble to stop a bullet – but it was the only shield Earth had.

"Brace for impact!" Richards shouted.

Three force-energy beams of enormous size and intensity, each potent enough to wipe out a human metropolis or perhaps even Attilan itself, struck the force screen. The screen held. The ships' occupants barely felt a tremor.

"Force screen still at 100% power," Starborg reported after checking his displays. "Is that the best they can do?"

"Of course not," Richards said. "They're testing us. We've only distracted them from their opening salvo on Earth. We've given them a chance to test our defenses."

"Then let's not fail..." Danse said, stating the obvious as a fourth force-energy beam appeared and struck the force screen.

"Screen integrity is dropping..." Starborg said with just a hint of worry in his voice.

"I can stabilize it. Hold on..." Richards said as he worked the controls around him feverishly.

"Stable at 98%," Starborg said more calmly.

"Haruwood, can you see their ships yet?" Danse asked. Haruwood's mutation was his telescoping eyes.

"Not a one," Haruwood responded.

"At this rate we will never see the faces of our destroyers," Lares said bitterly.

As if to validate Lares' pessimism, a fifth and a sixth force-energy beam struck the force screen. Everyone on board the defense ships could hear the force screen generators running harder and felt their ships vibrate around them.

"I'm compensating," Richards said, "but the strain is terrific on the generators. We might last an hour if they stayed this distance and bring no more weapons to bear on us."

"That won't happen," Lares said as the seventh force-energy beam struck the screen. An ominous red light appeared on his dashboard.

Richards saw a similar reading on his dashboard. "Lares," he said over the open channel, "I'm reading a malfunction in your generator. Can you fix it?"

"Not from where I am sitting," Lares said. "Carson! Baphomel!" he called out to two of his shipmates on the same open radio connection. "Can either of you do anything?"

"Force screen integrity is almost at 90%..." Danse said from his ship.

"I'm adjusting the field to ease off Lares' generator," Richards said. "Screen integrity might dip again..."

After what must have been a short, off-radio discussion, Carson came on saying, "Baphomel thinks he can fix it. We need three minutes."

Lares watched the heat gage on the generator spiking fast. "We don't have three minutes. Pleasure serving with you, Carson."

For as long as the radio connection held out, there were horrific explosions occurring within the ship and the muffled cries of the five occupants. When the explosion came that ripped their ship apart, it was almost a relief to see it over.

"Lares...Carson...Garion..." Danse said, but the pangs of guilt made the names of the deceased choke in his throat.

"Richards! Field integrity is almost to 50%!" Starborg cried.

"Everyone pull in 10 meters closer to Danse's ship," Richards said. "We need to tighten the formation to restore the force screen."

"Come on, you Kree bastards!" Danse said angrily, pounding his fists on his dashboard. "Closer, so I can fire on you at least once! Do we have any idea how far they are?"

"I did some triangulation from the angle of the beams a few moments ago," Richards said. "I estimate they are approximately 250,000 miles from Earth and closing. I'm also guessing field integrity will collapse in 20 seconds unless we tighten up our formation significantly. And if we do that, we might stop being an attractive target for the Kree."

"Then we will give Earth 20 more seconds," Danse said grimly. "Everyone stay where you are."

"It is out of our hands now..." Starborg said as he watched his own heat gage rising.

"Catastrophic system failure in ten..." Richards voice trailed off. As he watched his own heat gage rising to dangerous levels, his thoughts turned from their only, unspoken, hope of salvation to Sue.

"Look!" Haruwood said.

On the port side of where the Kree armada must be, a white streak moved through the black sky towards it. When the white streak reached the source of the force-energy beams, half of them winked out of existence.

"He's done it!" Richards shouted.

February 26, 1972. One second earlier.

Space, 240,000 miles from Earth.

Even from 2,000 miles away, the Silver Surfer could see the 70 _Gor-Vac_-class destroyers making up the first three rows of the invasion fleet. If they reached Earth, mankind would not even survive to see the arrival of the rest of the fleet. Now he turned to the person behind him on his silver board and, despite the vacuum around them, was able to say, "Hold on" and be heard. Then both Surfer and passenger were no more than a blur of motion – a white streak – hurtling towards the lead row of 10 destroyers.

The silver missile broke right through the forcefield around the closest destroyer and plowed into the bulkhead of the ship itself. Within an empty, forward compartment of the ship, the Silver Surfer stopped. His passenger dismounted from the Surfer's board. The passenger appeared to be wearing a scaled-down, man-sized suit of Iron Man armor, but when the man removed his helmet, he wore underneath it the mask of Black Bolt.

Black Bolt turned to the Silver Surfer and nodded. As if in answer, the Silver Surfer launched himself at the opposite bulkhead and punched right through it. If the Surfer had said anything, Black Bolt would likely not have heard it anyway over the great whooshing sound of air being swept out into the vacuum. The magnetic soles of the prototype Iron Man armor kept him in place as he faced towards the inner wall of the ship.

Normally he would not relish doing what he was about to do. He had spent his whole life training himself not to make a sound. Black Bolt shut his eyes and forced himself to remember that day, decades ago, when Maximus and the Kree took his parents away from him. And he knew. He had always known what he would say if given this opportunity to avenge himself. He opened his eyes and shouted, "AGON!"

It did not matter that there was not much air left in this room of the ship; Black Bolt only needed the air in his lungs to initiate the release of unearthly energy that the sound of his voice triggered. The energy just appeared all around him and spread out in all directions like a wave, though mainly in the direction he was facing. The energy wave was a force of nature, sweeping over everything in its path like an avalanche, or a tornado, or a tidal wave - only even more primal and basic in both form and effect. The first wall just ceased to be. The second inner wall melted before his eyes. A room full of machinery was torn apart like so much paper. As each layer of the ship was decimated, the layer behind it was flooded with blinding, blasting light and sound. Black Bolt was able to gaze deeper into the ship and see the death and destruction taking place. No Kree soldier aboard could outrun or hide from the deadly wave that either blew them to bits or reduced them to char in a moment. And everywhere the name of Agon echoed through the ruined vessel.

Black Bolt turned away. He had already seen enough blue-skinned aliens die in a second to sate the lust for revenge he had secretly carried around for decades. He tucked that part of himself away back in the dark side of his psyche and focused on more practical matters. The energy he had unleashed was reaching the power core of the spaceship even now. He put the helmet back on over his head and ran as fast as his magnetic boots allowed to a hole leading back out into space. By the time he reached the hole, he could not hear the explosion behind him, but he could feel the heat of it at his back and felt the force of it push him out through the hole. He drifted through space, floating end over end in a cloud of debris and hopelessly disoriented. This lasted for two seconds before he felt himself grabbed and pulled onto a familiar board. As soon as his feet touched down on it, he felt a reorientation to up and down and at least the illusion of gravity. When the Silver Surfer let go of his arm, he stood on his own.

Looking around, Black Bolt could see that the Silver Surfer had just destroyed a destroyer in the same length of time. And he noticed that the Surfer was looking at Black Bolt's handiwork at the same time.

"You may not wield the Power Cosmic, but the elemental powers at your command are quite impressive," the Surfer said.

Black Bolt gave no response, but looked to the work ahead. They had destroyed two destroyers and had sixty-eight more to go – and the Surfer had said he saw hundreds more of different classes of ships waiting behind. Black Bolt was already tired after speaking once and wondered if there was a limit to even the Silver Surfer's powers.

The nearest destroyers, all several miles away, had turned their energy weapons on the Surfer. He deflected the beams with waves of his hands, keeping both him and Black Bolt safe. Clearly the Surfer was not tiring yet as he launched himself towards the next-closest destroyer. He punched a hole through the fore bulkhead and deposited Black Bolt inside. This time, they had surprised a lone guard. Black Bolt leaped on the alien before he could raise his rifle, snatched the weapon away, and broke it in half in his hands. Black Bolt tore off the Iron Man helmet quickly, turned to face the inner wall and shouted, "RYNDA!"

February 27, 1972. Four hours later.

Attilan. The Royal Palace.

Medusa and Karnak sat in chairs in the communication room, whereas Triton preferred to stand. They were still receiving transmission from the remaining ships in high orbit and the voices of Danse, Haruwood, or Mr. Fantastic would occasionally grace the room with accompanying static. Medusa could hear someone speaking, but it was Karnak. She also realized that he was in the middle of a one-sided conversation with her and she had missed everything he had said. She must have fallen asleep sitting upright.

"What?" she asked.

"To keep you awake," Karnak said, "I was telling you about the little adventure I had on my own while I was searching for Crystal and Lockjaw last month. About an international martial arts tournament I was coerced into by the Sons of Fu Manchu...?"

"Oh, I am sorry," Medusa said. "I missed all of it."

Karnak looked hurt, though he did not say anything.

"Medusa," Triton said, putting a gloved hand on her shoulder, "you have been up for – what? - at least 36 hours. And I have not seen you eat a bite in the last eight. Go. Have a snack and get some rest. Karnak and I will monitor the situation and let you know when we hear anything about Black Bolt."

"You are right," Medusa said sullenly. She used her hair to help push herself out of her chair and upright. "I'll come back in an hour or two."

Karnak stared at Triton as Medusa left the room. After she was gone, he asked, "Was my story really so boring?"

Triton tried to look sympathetic. "You were bragging just a little. I rescued a hundred humans from a tsunami in Burma two months ago, but you do not hear me telling everyone about it."

Medusa did not feel hungry, but she did feel exhausted from worry. She stumbled through many hallways until she found herself in the residential wing of the Royal Family. She reached her quarters and, once inside, punched a code into the keypad by the door that locked it to all but a short list of recognized voices. She did not normally take such precautions, but she knew being locked in might help her resist the temptation to head right back to the communications room and ask for any news.

It was cold in her room. She must have left her window cracked open earlier, she surmised, though she felt it would be easier to climb under a blanket than to close it. She glanced at the intercom-clock on the nightstand by her bed as she fell back onto the bed and noticed that it was not turned on. She was sure she had not left that off and wondered who had been in her room. She was just wondering if she should wake herself up enough to look into this when green, leafy vines erupted from under her bed and closed in around her. Her reaction time was too slow and she only willed her hair to hold back the vines from her head and shoulders as the rest of her body was covered in them. She could hear her closet door open and a man in what looked like a head-to-toe rubber wetsuit rushed at her. Medusa's hair pushed against the vines and snapped them, but not before the man reached her and stuck her with a syringe in her arm. A big lock of hair brushed the man aside and flung him across the room, but Medusa could feel whatever was in that syringe already affecting her. Everything grew blurry as she lost her balance and collapsed onto the floor next to the bed.

NEXT ISH: Earth survives, but what becomes of Medusa? Find out next time as we wrap up Year One with a slam-bam action fest between the Royal Family and the new Frightful Four! It's called "Operation: Medusa!" and it's the first one with a title suggested by my nine-year old son, so you'd better like it!


	12. Chapter 12

"Operation: Medusa"

February 25, 1972. The day before the invasion fleets arrived.

Attilan. The Royal Palace.

It had been over a year since Crystal had last used her private quarters at the palace. Longer still since crying had been heard within.

Medusa had come here to find out why Crystal had not gathered with the others to meet the rest the Fantastic Four upon their arrival to Attilan and here was Crystal, not only not in her Fantastic Four uniform, but lying in bed and crying. Medusa sat on the edge of the bed next to her younger sister and put a hand on Crystal's back. "Whatever is the matter?" Medusa asked.

"Nothing," Crystal lied.

"John is with them," Medusa coaxed. "Do you not want to see him?"

"Not if it means going with them," Crystal said, sitting upright and looking at her sister with tear-streaked eyes. "I just can't right now."

"It's alright," Medusa said, taking her in her arms and hugging her. "Everyone knows you need your rest. No one is going to fault you for needing to stay out of this fight."

"No, that's not it!" Crystal said, pushing away. "It's not just this fight. I'm sitting all of them out. I never want to lead such a dangerous life again! I'm quitting the Fantastic Four!"

February 27, 1972. The first full day of the battle in space.

Attilan. The Royal Palace.

Seven long hours after the Kree began their assault on Earth – with the Skrull armada not much farther away – something amazing happened. Crystal tried calling Medusa's room to rouse her so she could come see, but Medusa was not answering.

Crystal quickened her pace down the corridor as she neared Medusa's private quarters. She was so eager to tell her sister the news. The appearance of all those…things in space around the Earth was going to turn the tide. She knew it. With luck, it would not all be over before Medusa could see it.

The door was locked. "Unlock protocol," Crystal said. Voice recognition software in the door confirmed her voice and unlocked the door for her. "Medusa?" Crystal asked as she entered. There was no response. The lights were out through the whole apartment. The air seemed cooler than Medusa liked it in here. Crystal went to the open door to the bedroom to check there next. "Medusa?" she repeated at the doorway.

The bed was a shambles, the window was broken – no, mostly missing, like a big hole in the wall – and Medusa was nowhere to be seen.

March 2, 1972. Thursday afternoon.

Kathmandu, Nepal. Tribhuvan International Airport.

The jeep roared through the parking lot, scattering people and their luggage out of the way. A driveway wrapped around the west side of the control tower building before adjoining the runways, but there was a line of spikes crossing the driveway to keep non-authorized personnel from driving there. The jeep blew all its tires driving over the spikes, but kept rolling on flat tires to the runways before coming to a screeching stop.

The driver literally vaulted out of the vehicle using a fancy metal pole. He wore a turban and loose-fitting clothes, though his skin clearly seemed to mark him as an occidental. The woman was even more Western in appearance, with uncovered orange hair and wearing a tight yellow jumpsuit. The workers standing idle in the shade of the control tower nearby were offended at once by her appearance. With the roar of the turbine engines on the last plane that took off fading in the distance, the workers began taking off their ear covers.

"Did some men board that plane with a woman?" the pole-vaulter asked loudly in the Sherpa dialect as he pointed to the plane that had just taken off. "Was there a woman with long red hair taken aboard that plane?" Karnak asked again with more urgency.

The men, obviously displeased with both his urgency and his uncovered female companion, did not answer at first. Only when he was in striking range of them with that metal staff he carried, and perhaps sensing that this man knew how to wield it as a weapon, did they seem to share his sense of urgency and point to the plane and nod.

Crystal, seeing their response, went to the back of the jeep and flung open the door of a big wicker crate in the back. Lockjaw bounded out of it. "Lockjaw!" she said. "Can you sense Medusa now?"

Lockjaw looked around, his beefy jowls swinging from side to side as he moved his head. He turned completely around, looking in all directions, and then hung his head and gave a sad howl.

"They're out of range of my powers already. And whatever they have that's keeping Lockjaw from locking onto her location is good at even this range," Crystal said with frustration as Karnak came back to the jeep.

"Do not worry," Karnak told her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "We have contacts throughout the continent and that is not a long range plane. Wherever they land, we will find them."

March 5, 1972. Sunday night.  
Islamabad, Pakistan.

The Margalla Hills were only a dark silhouette on a less-dark sky, but the city streets of Islamabad spreading out below the hills glowed bright with electric lights. The Islamabad International Airport, south of the city, was at least as brightly lit. But there were dark and shadowy places in the city as well. One such place was a one-acre jasmine garden enclosed within a high wall. At the center of the garden was a water treatment facility made to look like an old bathhouse of Punjabi architecture. Visitors from foreign countries had visited this jasmine garden before, but none as peculiar as the man from New York and the other man, originally from London, standing there now between two rows of high hedges.

"I don't like this," the Eel said.

"Shut yer gob," the Plantman said. "I've 'eard it before."

"It's taking too long. Something may have happened to Rabble-Rouser."

"Something else that could 'appen is you shutting up. He'll come with the truck."

"You're not at all worried about Medusa's family catching up to us again? They almost had us in Nepal. I'm telling you, we should just give Medusa back and get out while we can."

"Don't you care about your reputation?" Plantman asked with obvious disdain. "I don't know about you, but I'm not going back to England or the States as a loser. Eh?"

Both men turned to the sound of something whistling through the air as it drew closer quickly, crashing through the taller vegetation as it came. It came crashing through the hedge closest to Plantman and was revealed to be a chunk of granite weighing in at about 500 lbs. Plantman tried to twist out of the way crude missile, but caught it with his left elbow and was knocked by the impact into the Eel and knocking them both right through the hedge behind them. Plantman cried out in pain as if his left arm was broken. It was.

"They're here!" Eel cried in alarm as he slid out from under Plantman and came out of a summersault into a sprint for the building at the center of the garden.

"Bloody coward!" Plantman cried. He struggled to reach his feet just as something else came crashing through the foliage towards him. It was moving slower, but even bigger and closer to the ground. He clutched his raygun in his good right hand and began bathing the surrounding plants in the strange ray that made plants obey him. He had bathed every plant in sight just in time, as Lockjaw came barreling through what remained of the hedge between them. "Stop 'em!" Plantman cried to the plants.

Lockjaw howled as he charged at the green-garbed man, but before he could trample his target, he found jasmine vines looping around him and holding him back with unnatural strength. Lockjaw turned from side to side, trying to pull the plants free that crowded around him, and failed.

No more than 30 meters away, concealed from the combat by more hedges, Eel was stopped in his run when Karnak stepped out from behind a tall jasmine shrub. He had long-since discarded his human garb for the red uniform of a seeker. He held his multi-purpose weapon like a bo staff in front of him.

Neither combatant spoke, but went right for each other. Eel was more confident now, thinking he had a strategy that would allow him an easy win. As Karnak took the first swing with his weapon, Eel dodged, but he also reached out, grabbed hold of Karnak's weapon, and channeled electricity through his costume into the metal staff. Karnak only smiled as the weapon routed the electricity safely away from its wielder and discharged it in a lightning bolt back at Eel. Eel's rubber costume insulated and protected him, but the surprise of it had knocked him backward. Karnak followed up with a rapid series of swings that kept Eel on the defensive and dodging.

Further back, Lockjaw was gaining ground on Plantman, slowly uprooting and dragging behind him every plant that tried to hold him back. Some vines were still struggling to strangle the enormous, dog-like Inhuman, but his neck was so thick and muscular that the vines were more of a nuisance than a threat. Plantman was bathing more plants with his raygun and positioning them between himself and his monstrous foe as he continued his fighting withdrawal, but stopped abruptly when he heard a horn honk nearby. Plantman turned and broke into a run for the narrow driveway that led through the gardens to the water treatment plant. Lockjaw was finally able to run again too and bounded after his quarry.

Rabble-Rouser was behind the wheel of a 1970 Volkswagen Transporter, a pickup truck he had stolen for the purpose of transporting Medusa in the flatbed back to the nearest airport. Now Plantman raced to the truck hoping to use it as a getaway vehicle.

"What's going on?" Rabble-Rouser called out with his accent that sounded East European, but no one had been able to pin down what country he was from yet.

"When I get in the truck – floor it!" Plantman shouted back. He could see the look of surprise on Rabble-Rouser's face as Lockjaw plowed through some trees and came charging like a hairy, brown rhinoceros towards the truck.

Gorgon stepped out onto the driveway behind the truck. Without warning, he slammed one of his hooves down onto the pavement. The ground shook as if struck by an Earthquake. The pavement cracked and split apart into a field of debris. Plantman was knocked off his feet for the second time. He stumbled forward, accidentally grabbing the side of the truck with his broken arm and howling from the pain.

"Ooo, boy!" Rabble-Rouser said as he took his foot off the brake and slammed down the gas pedal. The tires squealed and burnt rubber as the truck peeled down the driveway. Plantman managed to hop on board the flatbed as the truck was gaining speed, but reached it only a second before Lockjaw did. Lockjaw grabbed the back corner of the truck between his jaws, clamped down, and shook the truck like a giant chew toy. Plantman was thrown off the truck at once, this time dropping his raygun in the process of twisting to avoid landing on his bad arm. Then Lockjaw lifted the truck completely off the ground and tossed it through the air. It came crashing down and landed on its side.

"Nice work, Lockjaw," Gorgon said as he came forward.

Rabble-Rouser climbed out of the side door of the truck, which was now facing the sky. "Now to see how you Inhumans like my Chaos Gauntlets," Rabble-Rouser said as he hopped down. He switched them on and pointed his hands towards Gorgon and Lockjaw. The same technology that had once been in his old wand radiated out from his new gauntlets.

Lockjaw had intended to step on Plantman and pin him to the ground, but the hypersonics of the Chaos Gauntlets made him confused and disoriented. He wound up stepping on Gorgon instead and pushing him over.

"Hey!" Gorgon exclaimed. The ultrasonics made him angry and he punched Lockjaw in the chest. Lockjaw picked up Gorgon in his mouth and tossed him over some nearby hedges on the side of the driveway.

"He's out of range of my gauntlets now," Rabble-Rouser told Plantman. "Run!"

Plantman had retrieved his raygun, but was not eager to stay behind for a rematch with Lockjaw. He took off running after Rabble-Rouser.

Gorgon had recovered quickly from his disorientation. He jumped into the air and vaulted well clear of the nearby, tipped-over truck. When he landed, the shockwave of his hooves striking the ground split the ground wide open before him. With a horrible rumble, the earth fell open into an increasingly long chasm until the chasm caught up with Plantman and Rabble-Rouser. They both fell three meters into earth and rock at the bottom of the chasm.

A light appeared from up ahead. It came from Karnak's multi-purpose weapon. He walked up to the edge of the chasm, holding an unconscious Eel under his arm. Karnak tossed the Eel into the chasm on top of Plantman and Rabble-Rouser.

"Look what I dug up," Gorgon quipped as he came up to join Karnak.

"Very amusing," Karnak said with a hint of a smile. "My foe gave me a good chase, but he proved less than durable when struck."

The three villains groaned at the bottom of the chasm as they tried to pull themselves to their feet.

"Lockjaw, stay here and guard," Gorgon said loudly. "If they give you any trouble...drop the truck on them."

Up the driveway, Chemistopheles was at the door to the water processing plant, looking out. He had heard tires squeal, a great crash, and then felt and heard what seemed to be an earthquake. "This does not bode well," he said out loud as he went back inside.

Inside, Medusa was wrapped tight from head to foot like a mummy in some heavy fabric and laying on a table. Chemistopheles tried to hold back a coughing fit as he came over to her. He took off his helmet and leaned over her face to listen to her breathing. He had just injected her with sedatives so she would not wake up when moved onto the truck and her breathing sounded shallow enough to confirm it had taken effect. "This could have been a simple kidnapping if your family was not so resourceful," he complained to her unconscious form. "I certainly did not want it to come to using you as a hostage."

He turned suddenly to face the door when he heard something that sounded like a heavy object being moved closer to the entrance. It could be the others, but his instincts told him it was not. He reached for the remote on the corner of the table and activated the acid bombs around the doorway before putting his helmet back on. Then he drew a knife from his belt sheath and held it by Medusa's bandaged face.

With a crash, something came bursting through the door. For a moment, Chemistopheles thought it might be the Thing, but whatever it was, it was covered in gray rocks instead of orange ones. The motion-sensitive bombs around the door exploded, showering a powerful acid bath all over the man-shaped mound of rocks. As the "rock-man" stepped into the room, though, the rocks began to fall away as if being shed. Underneath the rocky exterior stood Crystal.

"Handy superpower," Chemistopheles said, "but my knife is chemically treated so that one scratch is all I need to make your Medusa just as petrified as the victims of her namesake."

"Don't," Crystal said, standing her ground. "Why don't you just tell me what you want? Why have you done this?"

"What I want? I already sent you my ransom demands."

"Eight hundred pounds of gold," Crystal repeated back to them from the ransom demand they had received. "That's a lot, but we did bring it to Nepal. And then you changed the drop-off point again to India. And then dodged us again. If you want the gold so badly, why delay the exchange so long?"

"Let's just say we have a benefactor who will double our take if we stretch this out long enough."

"For what purpose?" Crystal pressed, but just then they heard the sound of footsteps outside.

"Your backup or mine?" Chemistopheles asked. He grabbed Medusa's head and raised it higher just as he brought his knife in closer, but then was interrupted by a coughing fit that sounded like it was filling his mask with phlegm.

Crystal took advantage of the distraction. At her mental command, Chemistopheles was struck with the force of a hurricane that threw him away from Medusa and pinned him against the far wall of the room. He had struck the wall hard enough that Crystal thought he might be knocked out, or at least should have the wind knocked out of him. She let the hurricane disappear and, since this was a concrete room, allowed a wall of fire to spring up around her prisoner to keep him motionless while she attended to Medusa.

Two figures appeared at the door. They were Crystal's backup – Gorgon and Karnak. "Look!" Karnak said, pointing to the wall of fire.

Chemistopheles ran through the ring of fire effortlessly, protected by his green suit of armor. He ran headlong through a side window and with a leap crashed right through it.

"Let him go," Karnak said, holding Gorgon back. "We have his three companions to question."

"And, more importantly, we have Medusa back," Crystal said, cradling her sister's head in her arms.

Four hours later, Medusa woke up to find she was lying on a stretcher aboard what appeared to be a private plane. Though initially concerned she was still a prisoner, she turned and saw Crystal sitting next to her.

"Oh! Thank Heaven you're awake!" Crystal said, hugging her sister.

"Crystal…you came for me," Medusa said weakly. "I am glad you did not…sit this out."

"I couldn't. Being Diablo's prisoner was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, until I almost lost you."

Both sisters held onto each other and shed happy tears the rest of the trip home.

March 5, 1972. Sunday night.  
Attilan. Royal Palace.

The halls of the royal palace seemed unusually deserted, even as the alarm klaxons rang. Triton raced to the nearest guard station hoping to find someone. He was lucky enough to find two.

"Come with me!" Triton commanded.

The two guards fell into line and the three of them made a mad dash to the forbidden quarters of Maximus. Triton was surprised to see the door was not only not locked, it was not even closed tight. Triton kicked it in and sprang inside.

The room was empty. As was the next, and the next in the royal quarters that had long served as Maximus' prison cell. Triton had known to expect this when the alarm sounded, but still had to see for himself. For that particular alarm served only one purpose – to sound if Maximus should violate his house arrest and leave the royal palace.

NEXT ISH: Black Bolt returns from space to find his brother gone, Karnak hunts down Chemistopheles, and the rest of the Royal Family search for answers as to what Maximus had accomplished during their forced absence. Curious yourself? Read on in next month's "Return to Attilan" and the start of Year 2 of the Amazing…Inhumans!


	13. Chapter 13

"Enter Karnak"

By Scott Casper

January 30, 1972

China. Outside Shanghai

"I watched you fight in the quarter-finals," Bruce Lee said to Karnak in thickly accented English. "I've seen a lot of martial arts styles and yours isn't any one of them. And your accent, I can't place it to anywhere. Where are you from?"

"You are from, where? The United States?" Karnak asked back. "Does that define who you are?"

Bruce Lee smiled. "No, it does not."

"Then knowing where I am from will mean nothing to you," Karnak said. "I too watched your fight in the quarter-finals. I have seen many martial arts styles as well and do not recognize yours either."

"I call it Jeet Kune Do. Will you not at least tell me what your style is called?"

Karnak nodded. "It is actually an ancient style called Kirb-Myran."

Their conversation was interrupted by Captain America placing his hand on Karnak's shoulder. "It's time," Captain America said.

"It was a pleasure fighting you, Captain America," Karnak said. "It was not a fight I expected to win."

"If I was 10 years younger, you wouldn't have," Captain America replied with a wink and a smile. "Good luck to you, young man," he added, shaking Bruce Lee's hand.

The large ring at the center of the auditorium was much larger than most boxing or wrestling rings – 10 meters on each side. The ring was not padded with canvas – it was hard concrete. Instead of being surrounded by ropes, the ring was closed off by rows of chains and was brightly lit, while only dim light shone on the audience around it. It was a small audience, less than a hundred people, half of whom had tried out in the preliminary bouts. One box of seats was completely dark where the tournament's organizers – the self-proclaimed Sons of Fu Manchu – sat.

For some, like Karnak, coming here had started out as just a lark, but the intensity of the tournament had been infectious. No one was taking this last round less than seriously. While Karnak had planned on leaving after the preliminary bouts, having joined them on a lark, he was now totally committed to this final fight.

An announcer stepped into the ring with a microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, it all comes down to this!" the announcer said in Chinese. After each sentence the announcer paused while he was translated into French and then English over the auditorium loudspeaker. "The winner of this final round will win the title of Strongest under the Heavens! In this corner, coming from the United States – Bruce Lee! And in this corner, coming from parts unknown – Karnak!"

Karnak and Bruce Lee stepped toward the center of the ring to subdued applause. The two fighters began to circle each other defensively, assessing each other. Karnak was fully dressed in his red Seeker uniform, complete with tall hat and attached face mask. Lee was shirtless and shoeless, wearing only pants.

"You're really going to fight me in that hat?" Lee asked mockingly.

"You are free to knock it off me," Karnak replied.

Lee stopped circling and made an attack on preparation. In four hundredths of a second, Lee's fist was almost within striking distance of Karnak's chest, but Karnak had seen it coming and raised his arm to block in even less time, sweeping the fist to the side with two millimeters to spare. Karnak tried a circular block to counterstrike, but Lee was not willing to give up the offensive and followed up with a left-handed strike to the chest, but that fist was blocked before it hit its mark as well. Faster than the human eye could follow, Lee made six more rapid punches with simultaneous blocks of such intensity that Karnak fell back three steps while defending himself, but in the end Lee had to pause and had not landed a strike yet.

"Are you spent already?" Karnak asked.

Lee was starting to show sweat on his muscular, shirtless physique. "No," he said.

Karnak struck out next. His open-handed technique looked like karate to the untrained eye, but Lee could tell the technique was different. Worse, Karnak gave no tells – no movement of his body telegraphed any attack Lee could recognize. It was only instinct that allowed Lee to block the first three strikes. A jab to the abdomen struck home and made Lee fall backward, the wind knocked out of him. Lee caught his balance before he landed on one knee and righted himself. Since Karnak did not follow through, Lee had a moment to catch his breath and then say, accusingly, "Not fair! Your strength is not human!"

"It is true I am not human," Karnak responded calmly. "Will you let my strength define your limits?"

Lee responded with an angry yell and a charge. Karnak held his ground, so Lee moving quickly into the cinch and grabbing for Karnak's hand. Karnak mistook the move and blocked, which allowed Lee to grab both hands and cross them with one hand while Lee struck with his left fist to Karnak's temple.

Karnak saw his blunder in a flash of pain and realized he was at a disadvantage at this distance, but if he pulled back he would have to reengage. He pushed in closer to grappling range where his superior strength and speed allowed him to trip and throw Lee.

Lee rolled on the concrete, his muscular back scratched badly from the rough surface, sprang up and turned to face his foe. Karnak had, for the second time, not followed through when he had Lee at a disadvantage, but stood his ground. Lee, incensed, shouted, "Are you just toying with me?"

"Not at all," Karnak said. "The philosophy of this art demands fair play. I will not strike until you are ready to defend."

Lee grimaced and wiped the sweat from his brow before he closed the distance between them again. With five hundredths of a second between multiple angular attacks, Lee made seven attempts in rapid succession, forcing Karnak to use simple blocks that did not allow for counterstrikes. Then Lee switched strategy, making his first elbow strike – blocked – followed by a chest strike – blocked – followed by a feint to the knee before spinning and lashing a fist at Karnak's head. Karnak was slightly slower in blocking this time and lost his hat to the fist.

Karnak retook the offensive, with open hand strikes to the shoulder, head, floating ribs, chest, abdomen, chest and other shoulder. Karnak seemed faster now too, as if he had been holding back on speed before. Lee could not block and strike simultaneously and fell back on double time hits to defend himself. Lee winced at the force of the blows he was blocking with his fists, but missed blocking the second shoulder strike and felt his left arm go numb.

Lee, in desperation, drew on Chinese, Filipino and Thai arts to vary his attacks and try to take Karnak by surprise. He tried to draw Karnak into another trap by leaving his right elbow exposed, but Karnak saw the trap and would not take the bait. That at least took Karnak out of close fighting range, enough that Lee could switch to kicking. After blocking two kicks, Karnak trapped Lee's right leg, but Lee had let him so he could counter-kick with his left at close range and Karnak was finally off-balance. Lee raised his body to a sitting-up position in midair so he could follow up with a straight punch to the face. Karnak took the punch but counter-struck with a chop to the shoulder that drove Lee down to the concrete slab again.

Karnak wiped blood from his nose as Lee, instead of rolling away, attempted to sweep Karnak off his feet. Karnak jumped, did a flip in mid-air and came down behind Lee. For a third time, Karnak paused until Lee was back on his feet but gave Lee no time at all to retake the offensive as he launched a roundhouse kick at his foe. Lee grabbed the leg and vaulted over it, but Karnak followed through with an angular strike that took Lee in the right armpit and sent him sprawling off-balance and Lee, for all his speed, could not block the abdomen strike that followed. For the second time in the fight, Lee had the wind knocked out of him. Karnak kicked at Lee's knee and knocked his legs out from underneath him and Lee crashed to the mat.

"You have fought well," Karnak said. "You have pushed your body to perfection, but you are still, after all, only human."

Bruce Lee screamed in rage as he sprang back to his feet and launched into another series of strikes, but the coordination was no longer there. He either did not know it or refused to admit it, but his body was spent. Karnak blocked with ease before a circular counterstrike took Lee down with another open-handed shoulder strike.

"Please, accept your defeat with dignity," Karnak urged Lee with all seriousness. "You have been shown your limitations. Chose to see it not as a failure, but as an opportunity to know yourself better."

Lee sat up, but did not stand as the referee counted to ten and declared Karnak the victor by a technical knockout. He did not accept Karnak's hand to help him up but only glared angrily at the Inhuman who beat him.

The crowd cheered as Karnak was handed the belt he had won and he held it up for all to see. It was a jubilant moment everywhere except in the darkened box where the Sons of Fu Manchu stood watching. There, the outcome was not celebrated so much as discussed.

"Lee never had a chance against the foreigner," said the youngest among them in Mandarin Chinese.

"Lee was not challenged by Karnak, he was challenged by his own limitations," said another.

"How can one best his own limitations?" the youngest asked.

"Worse," said another. "Whatever inner demons pushed him before will torment him worse in the future. His true battle will be against them now and they will consume him if he loses."

"You will find a way," another told him.

"When your time comes to face Karnak, you will find a way to overcome your limitations," the previous speaker told the youngest.

"You were wise to keep me from entering the tournament this year," the youngest told the others. "This inner battle I must still prepare for."

"Wisely said," said another. "Only when you have mastered that battle will you be the true Master of Kung-Fu, Shang-Chi."


	14. Chapter 14

"The Frightful Four"

By Scott Casper

March 19, 1965

Over the Mediterranean Sea

Three men in a private jet sat and talked.

The old bald man in the business suit smiled and held up a champagne glass to the others. "I don't know what to think about your offer, gentlemen, but I like your style!" the man known as the Destroyer said.

The man with the thin brown beard on the end of a long face, wearing a leisure suit, grinned. "I'm sure we appreciate that, Mr. Stanton," the Wizard said.

The blue-skinned man in futuristic-looking body armor had been looking out the window but turned to the others and Zemu said, "Wizard, I do not understand why we even need this man,"

"Patience, Zemu," the Wizard said. "Besides our shared hatred of the Human Torch, we each have a value to one another here. You need me and my machines to keep you vibrationally attuned to this universe until you can go back to your own Earth in triumph. I wish the aid of Mr. Stanton because he is a professional spy with strong ties to several Soviet countries which might be of use to us. And we both need you because your Earth's technology dwarfs even my inventions."

"And the reason we need this fourth person?" Zemu asked.

"How will we call ourselves the Frightful Four with only three members?" the Wizard asked, amused by his humor. "Besides, you will see when we reach Greece," the Wizard said. "The recruit we seek is most...exquisite."

The jet came in for a landing at Skiathos Island National Airport. Zemu pressed a button on his helmet and a hologram of a Caucasian-skinned man wearing a business suit sprang up around him.

The three men exited the airport.

Surrounded by the opulence of a resort island for the rich and famous, the Destroyer whistled and said, "This fourth member must do very well for himself."

"Not necessarily," was all the Wizard would say, still amused with himself and how much his cryptic answers seemed to annoy Zemu.

A driver-less limousine was waiting for them and the three men piled into the back. Next to a small wet bar was a computer of the Wizard's design, far in advance of 1970's technology. He turned it on and waited for the voice recognition software to load. "Computer," the Wizard said when it was ready, "scan all local police reports...cross reference for Medusa...extrapolate location...and engage autopilot to intercept," he said slowly for the computer.

The limousine turned itself on and rolled out of the airport parking lot onto the open road. The darkened windows shielded them from outsiders being surprised or alarmed by a driver-less car. Zemu just sighed. "Is this contraption supposed to impress me?" he said.

"No," the Wizard lied.

Ten minutes later, the limousine had left the wealthy district around the harbor behind, driven through an industrial park half-full of warehouses, and come to a business area zoned for the shops, restaurants and bars patroned by the working class of the island.

"Stop the car," the Wizard said when they saw cars marked as belonging to the island constabulary parked outside a particularly seedy-looking bar.

"Stopping for some vodka? We seem to be out..." the Destroyer quipped before a uniformed Greek police officer came crashing through the window of the bar.

Two more police officers came sprinting out the door of the bar with pistols un-holstered and in their hands already. The third officer who had come out through the window just knelt where he was. A fourth officer joined them from the cars with a shotgun.

The rest of the glass in the window exploded outward in a shower of glass mixed with something red. It was hard to tell what the blur of red was, but it was clearly throwing the glass out into the street with deadly speed. The three standing officers ducked behind their cars for cover, while the fourth was lucky to still be on the ground as the glass flew over him.

Out of the glass-free window stepped a tall, shapely and beautiful woman who was dressed casually in a short-sleeved top and bell-bottom jeans. She was not Greek like the locals but was much fairer-skinned, with a huge mane of bright red hair that came down almost to the back of her knees. Her hair was her most unusual feature, as it writhed and moved seemingly of its own accord. Each curl of her long hair reminded them of an octopus' tentacles.

The policemen trained their guns on her and shouted to her in Greek for her to surrender. She stood still, but her hair responded by whipping around in a circular motion so fast that it became a huge fan around her head. The dust and litter on the sidewalk was swept up into the faces of the officers and blinded them long enough for her to close the gap between the window and the closest parked car. The hair stopped rotating and lashed out at the car, anchored to it in many spots, and then – incredibly – turned the car over on its side and held it as a shield in front of her. The officers fell back behind the next closest car but she turned the car into a weapon, slamming it against the parked cars and ramming them into each other until it was not safe for the officers to remain beside any of them for cover.

"This could still turn ugly if enough backup were to arrive," the Wizard said. "Zemu, why don't you introduce yourself and see if you can..." but Zemu was already gone.

The Destroyer and the Wizard next saw Zemu standing out in the middle of the street. He depressed the same button as earlier and the hologram concealing him disappeared. Medusa saw him and turned to face the new potential threat. Her hair sat down the car, but did not let go of it.

Zemu swung his fist and, ten meters away, Medusa felt a powerful punch to the face. The spatial distorter in Zemu's armor allowed him to punch at a distance and his exoskeleton boosted his strength, barely, to superhuman levels. "Now, let's see how good you are..." Zemu said in the almost identical Greek he knew from his Earth.

Medusa was staggered by the punch but more from the surprise of it than its force. When Zemu tried the same stunt again a moment later, she reached out with her hair to block and catch. Zemu's hand was snared and he was pulled forward through space relative to her location and reappeared next to her. Medusa responded instantly by lifting him off his feet with her hair and punching him right through the window of the overturned car. Her hair began to crush the car up around him to trap him there, but Zemu sidestepped through space-time and stood, waiting with his arms crossed, next to the car for her next move.

The Wizard, who had already exited the limousine, clapped loudly. "Wonderful! Such strength, such power, such beauty! Notice," he said, more to the Destroyer, who came up more cautiously behind him, "her quick reaction time and rapid response to the unexpected."

Medusa, noticing that Zemu was no longer attacking her, turned her attention to the Wizard. "I think I have seen you before," she said in Greek. "Do I know you?"

"I wish I could say yes, my dear," the Wizard responded in Greek. "At least I can offer you the chance to know us better by joining our little team. Between the four of us, we have abilities or resources that, combined, can make us masters of this world. I offer you wealth, power and protection from those who would hound you."

Medusa was swayed by little of his offer except for that last part. She remembered almost nothing of her past, but she did know that she was hounded – and not just by the local police but by some unseen menace. Perhaps allies would protect her...? "I accept, for now," she said, "at least until I have heard more about your offer."

"Fair enough," the Wizard said with a smile and a nod. "Then that completes our quartet and the Frightful Four are born."

"Wait–" the Destroyer said. "What is this you mean about masters of this world?" he asked, having understood enough Greek to catch the Wizard saying that. "I thought our goal was revenge against the Human Torch?"

"Oh no..." the Wizard said as his smile turned into a wicked grin. "I have ambitions much larger than that..."

Next: Moving back to the "present" from our two flashbacks, Black Bolt returns from space to find his brother gone, Karnak hunts down Chemistopheles, and the rest of the Royal Family search for answers as to what Maximus had accomplished during their forced absence. Curious yourself? Read on in next month's "Return to Attilan!"


	15. Chapter 15

Somewhere in time and space

Possibly

In his 25 years of life, Rick Jones had only three years of college to his name and had never held down a serious job or a serious girlfriend. He had, however, been the sidekick to the Hulk, Captain America and an Avenger in his own right. He had experienced things no ordinary 25-year-old with a college degree, a steady job and a girlfriend could have ever imagined.

This was one of those things.

The Supreme Intelligence of the Kree Empire floated next to him – bulbous, green, almost bubbling skin on a bloated, misshapen face with tumorous growths extending and retracting into the skin – yet the whole thing was as flat as if viewed on a huge television screen. Indeed, Rick had the impression that he was viewing the Supreme Intelligence on a screen though there was no sign of a screen in the white, misty place where they were.

"And so it ends, Rick Jones," the Supreme Intelligence said at last.

"What do you mean, it ends?" Rick asked.

"It is over. My rebellious subjects are defeated at the Battle of Earth, as is the Skrull armada that would have engaged them. And you have done this for me, Rick Jones."

"How the heck did I do that?" Rick asked, still hopelessly confused.

"With your heroes, Rick Jones. My people long ago forgot how to dream of a better world and forgot of heroes that are the icons of that dream. Your race is rich with this iconography. And so, through your mind, I have tapped the dreams of the human race and brought every hero ever conceived of by man to life. It is this irresistible army that has saved your world. For in all the universe, does any race but man have such a propensity to dream…?"

"Return to Attilan"

By Scott Casper

May 18, 1972

Thursday morning, ten weeks later

The Aerodrome in Attilan

Medusa shook off her dreams from last night – strange dreams of warriors in bright, gaudy armor – and watched the skies. Finally she saw the aircraft approach that she had been waiting for. She waved to it with a huge lock of her scarlet hair and the pilot, spotting her, course-corrected and brought his VTOL craft down on a landing pad closer to her.

The pilot was an Inhuman with green skin and round, glassy eyes, but in all other respects looked human. He dusted off his flight suit as he came out and around to the passenger door and held it open for the passenger.

Countess Stephanie De La Spirosa did not take the pilot's hand and, still squeamish around non-human-looking people, did her best to maneuver around him without contact as she left the plane. She instinctively held onto her hat, as if expecting there to be the wind kicked up by helicopter blades, but the air was calm around the hovercraft.

"Stephanie!" Medusa said, coming over and giving her friend a hug. "So glad you agreed to come! You know, it's quite an honor for someone with only partial Inhuman heritage to be allowed to see the Great Refuge."

"So you tell me…" Stephanie said, looking to the strange city laid out before her eyes. "It's all so much to take in." She returned her gaze to Medusa. "But you are in your superhero costume! Surely you are not on another adventure?"

Medusa looked down at the familiar, bluish-purple bodysuit with matching purple gloves and boots. "No, these are my regular clothes!" Medusa replied with a laugh. "It is only coincidence that Inhuman fashion resembles what human superheroes wear. And our masks, they are a symbol of royalty we wear in the Royal Family, instead of crowns or tiaras. But enough talk of clothes, unless you want to talk about where you bought your dress while I show you around…" Medusa said, good-humoredly, while she took Stephanie by the arm.

Stephanie took the bait and began talking about her last shopping trip in Paris until she felt quite at home. She missed some talking points about local landmarks because of it. They walked right through the circular plaza known as the Tower of Vision without any explanation as to why it was called that and no hint as to why the tower had long been torn down since Maximus' encounter with Kree spies there many years ago. And perhaps that was for the best, as Medusa did not feel like telling that particular story, especially not with things as they were in Attilan these days.

A few blocks north and a little west of that pair, a crowd of over a hundred Inhumans had gathered at Attilan Park. They stood facing the royal palace, to the northeast of the park, and chanted in Tilanese, "Don't trust the king!"

Arching over the tops of all but the tallest trees of the park was Wisdom Bridge. It was on that bridge where Gorgon and Triton stood, observing the protestors below them.

"Shameful!" Gorgon shouted, though not loudly enough to be heard by the protestors over their own din. "Absolutely shameful that they can be allowed to talk about Black Bolt that way! I've half a mind to…to knock this bridge over on top of them!"

"Do not let others hear you say such things," Triton admonished his cousin. "Public sentiment is already against the Royal Family too much as it is."

"They must all be mind controlled by Maximus," Gorgon said.

Triton shook his head. "You know all tests for that have been negative, though I wouldn't doubt that little schemer is somehow involved in all this. There have always been those who don't trust Black Bolt to lead us. His terrifying power…his unintentional role in the death of his parents…his affinity for humans. If his brother was not so much worse, I wonder if the crowd below us would not be larger."

"Do you think the Genetics Council will listen to this minority voice?"

"Why would they not? A vote of no confidence in Black Bolt would allow them to start a special repeal session in Parliament Hall. Blue Parrish would love to repeal the cloning restrictions."

Gorgon smacked his fist on the rail in frustration, though not hard enough to break it. "And the repeal session would end in a vote for which brother should be king. I don't like it. People forget all too quickly of Maximus' past treachery."

"We need proof that Maximus was behind Medusa's kidnapping. That is Karnak's job."

May 18, 1972, afternoon

Douz, Tunisia

Orson Kasloff walked slowly through the crowded marketplace because, for the first time in days, he was sure he had lost his pursuer. With practiced ease he glanced at the exotic merchandise for sale without appearing too interested in anything so as not to attract the attention of overzealous merchants. His thoughts were already on dinner and where to spend more of his share of the substantial down payment he had earned for kidnapping Medusa. His thoughts were not deep, as luck would have it, so he did notice when people around him started to stop and point somewhere off behind him.

Turning around, Orson saw the crowd parting for someone only 200 feet behind him. He did not need to wait to see who was parting the crowd because he caught a glimpse of an all-too familiar-looking metal pole that stood taller than people's heads. He turned and looked for a quick way out of the marketplace. Many of the streets leading out of the market were so narrow, they looked like alleyways. He could not risk being caught down a dead end. He would have to risk the more open and public route of the main road back to his hotel. If he reached it in time, he would at least have his equipment before the Seeker found him.

It was a mile back to the hotel – too far to walk or run with the Seeker so close on his heels. Up ahead a lone man in a 1962 Chrysler Valiant was making slow progress through the crowded street in the direction Orson wanted to go. Since it was a hot day in Douz, all the windows were down. Orson walked up to the driver's side door, slipping his acid gun out of the shoulder holster under his jacket. He fired it thought the open window right into the driver's face. At its lowest setting, the acid spray made the man scream out in pain, but did not dissolve his face. Orson opened the door, grabbed the man clutching his own face, and threw him out into the street. Less concerned about the safety of pedestrians than the previous driver, Orson gunned the engine and either made people jump out of his way or ran them over.

Back at where the road spilled out into the marketplace, Karnak had already caught up close enough to see the car careening dangerously down the street away from him. His quarry clearly knew how close he was. Abandoning subtlety, Karnak gripped his multi-purpose weapon firmly with both hands and closed his thumb over the button that activated the concussive blaster at the bottom end of the long weapon. Kept on, the concussive blast acted to propel Karnak off his feet, like holding onto a rocket. Then it was simply a matter of steering the 'rocket' in the direction Karnak wished to go.

The gap between Karnak and the speeding car was closing swiftly now, but simply overtaking the car was not enough when so many humans were being injured or killed by this mad chase. The quickest way to end it was to steer his weapon on a collision course with the car – and so he did. The weapon ripped through the car, shredding it like paper. The car skidded to a halt and Karnak fell into the wreckage. The impact made him lose his grip on his weapon and knocked him off his feet. It took a moment to spot the multi-purpose weapon in all the debris around him. By the time he had it in hand and was on his feet again, he saw that his quarry was almost into the hotel, coughing badly as he ran. Karnak did a standing pole vault out of the wreckage, clearing the blast radius just as the gas in the car caught on fire and exploded.

A minute later, Karnak came around. The force of the explosion had stunned him, but it had also blown him well clear of the blaze. Emergency vehicles were approaching from the east, opposite from the route Karnak and Orson had taken. Two dark-skinned men in dress shirts and slacks were helping Karnak to his feet. Being uninformed, both were probably just Good Samaritan bystanders. They were talking to him in a language he did not understand. As he scanned the ground for his weapon and spotted it nearby, he asked, "Does anyone know French or English?" in French.

"I know English," said the one who was now holding Karnak's tall red hat and handing it back to him, in English.

"Follow me," Karnak said in English as he collected his weapon and took his hat back. Then he dashed to the hotel entrance and pushed through to the lobby.

The lobby had hardwood floor covered in red rugs, rows of potted plants lining the side walls and large ceiling fans hanging from a high ceiling. There was a crowd of people in the middle of the lobby, some fair-skinned but mostly dark-skinned, all counting dinars. Karnak imagined his quarry might have thrown all that money into the lobby to slow pursuit, or perhaps to bribe everyone.

"Where did the coughing man go?" Karnak asked loudly in English. When no response came, he turned around and shouted to the Good Samaritan who had followed him. "You! Ask the manager to tell me where the coughing man went?"

The Good Samaritan translated for Karnak and a large, dark-skinned man with glasses gave the translator a response. "The coughing man said not to tell which room he's in."

"Then tell me what rooms he isn't in," Karnak asked through his interpreter.

The hotel manager seemed to like this trick and smiled as he responded. "He most definitely is not in rooms 1-22 or 24-38," the manager said in half-decent English without the interpreter.

A minute later, Karnak was on the third floor looking at the door to room 23. Just in case the manager had lied, he decided on a slightly subtle approach – he simply kicked the door in. Inside, his quarry had found plenty of time to change into his Chemistopheles body armor and gas mask. Chemistopheles threw a canister at the open doorway, but Karnak reacted by activating the repulsion ray from the top of the multi-purpose weapon. When the canister of nitroglycerin struck Karnak's staff, the ray propelled the concussive force of the explosion away from Karnak and it ripped through the hotel room. Chemistopheles was blown across the room and laid there at the far wall. His body armor seemed to have protected him from serious harm while the furniture around him was torn to pieces and smoldering.

"Had you just surrendered, all this could have been avoided," Karnak said as he walked into the room, approaching Chemistopheles. Chemistopheles was playing possum until he started to cough and gave himself away. He tried to rise to his feet as quickly as a man of his age and condition could and, all the while, a gas that smelled like sulfur pumped out of an aperture in his glove. Karnak dodged to the side as the gas ignited into a burning mist.

"I won't surrender! I was warned what you Inhumans do to prisoners!" Chemistopheles cried before he started coughing again. "My days may be numbered by asbestos poisoning, but I'll spend the rest of them in a way of my choosing, not yours!"

Karnak was out of range for open hand combat, but the multi-purpose weapon was still in his hands and long enough to reach Chemistopheles with a swing. He hooked the end of the weapon under Chemistopheles' gas mask and, with a mighty tug, tore it loose from the man's head. The smell of the burning sulfurous compound was too much for Chemistopheles' lungs and he fell to his knees in his worst coughing fit yet.

"Such foolishness," Karnak said with a sigh. "Had you asked us, we might have helped cure you of your poisoning, instead of it leading to all this." With that, he activated the homing beacon on the multi-purpose weapon. His job as the Seeker was done.

May 21, 1972, evening

Palace of the Royal Family, Attilan

The throne on the dais at the end of the audience hall sat empty, as Black Bolt, Medusa and Karnak sat in more ordinary chairs on the dais' edge. Karnak was relaxing in more casual green and white clothes while he finished reporting to Black Bolt and Medusa the last of what had happened in his pursuit of Chemistopheles. Black Bolt had nodded his appreciation several times at his cousin's thoroughness.

"And the device that had blocked him and the rest of his Frightful Four from Lockjaw's senses?" Medusa asked at the end.

"I found it in his hotel room. It looked well beyond normal human technology. Though damaged by the explosion, it was intact enough that our scientists should soon be able to provide indisputable proof that Maximus was behind your abduction," Karnak said.

"I almost wish they cannot," Medusa said. "Even after all these years and so many disappointments, it is hard to accept that Maximus can be so evil."

"Then your wish is to be granted," Gorgon said as he entered the audience hall. "The analysis is complete. The telelocation scrambler is indeed more advanced than we gave the humans credit for, but the components were not made here in Attilan. They bear the markings of Chinese upon them. It seems the testimony of our prisoners was true after all. Our opponent is not Maximus – but the Mandarin!"

To Be Continued...

Next: What? But...we know Maximus did it! We saw it! Or did we? More on the mysterious plot develops next time when our two main suspects meet up and the last guest star you ever expected shows up on the steps of Attilan asking for help! Don't miss – "In the Castle of the Mandarin!"


	16. Chapter 16

"_In the Castle of the Mandarin!"_

By Scott Casper

**June 27, 1972  
Gansu Province, Red China**

In a valley as rocky and barren as it was remote stood a castle. The castle was 300 years old, though it had seen much renovation over the centuries and now incorporated elements of architectural design from many cultures. Its owner, the man known as the Mandarin, was, if nothing else, inclusive when it came to things that he liked.

It was a quiet castle, as one thing the Mandarin did not like was people. He had two wives he could stand and they had just served him supper. After making them taste the food first, he dismissed them so he could eat it in peace. He picked at the rice on his plate with his chopsticks and stewed over, first, the hated feeling of insignificance he felt when forced to confront the reality of Galactus and then, second, the older indignities of his thwarted plans to turn the Hulk to his service. So angry was he, in fact, that when the intruder alarm sounded he growled and threw his plate across the room. He then stood up and reached over the table to the control console that served a sort of hi-tech centerpiece. Long-nailed fingers massaged dials until a blip appeared on a map of the castle that scrolled past a viewscreen. The Mandarin grimaced and then frowned as he struggled to recognize the room being displayed. It was…the kitchen.

The Mandarin had not been to the kitchen himself in nearly three years, but after reviewing the maps on the viewscreen he remembered how to get there from the dining hall. He exited through a side doorway and took a winding corridor around to the kitchen. He wore his favored green robes and only donned his purple cowl as he neared the end of his short journey. He would greet this intruder, he thought, as the Mandarin was expected to be seen. The door was shut but he angrily kicked it in.

A short, skinny man, apparently Caucasian, sat leaning back on a stool with his booted feet propped up on a counter. He wore a dark red, tight bodysuit with a decorative, gold breastplate. A red and gold helmet sat next to him on the counter. He had a bowl and spoon in his hands.

"Who are you," the Mandarin said. It was asked more like a command than a question.

"You know what I like? Sweet and sour pork," Maximus said without answering the question, in perfect Mandarin Chinese. "You should have some of that around here for when you have guests. I'm forced to eat this same tripe you've been eating. What is it?" he asked as he took another spoonful.

"Ox-tripe soup," the Mandarin said plainly.

Maximus spat out his last spoonful of the soup and then beamed a big smile. "Only kidding; I actually like it."

"I give you this one last chance to identify yourself before I turn you into a bug," the Mandarin said coldly as he raised his right hand and showed the five colorful rings adorning his fingers.

"Oh, that's right, we haven't met," Maximus said more seriously as he slowly leaned forward and sat his bowl down on the counter. "I wasn't with my cousins when you were kicking each other's butts almost two years ago*. I am Maximus of the Inhumans."

"The Inhumans?" the Mandarin said, surprised for a moment. "So you have come at last for revenge?"

"No, but it's coming," Maximus said, still serious, as he stood up. "And I'm on your side."

"I am not disinterested in recruiting lackeys," the Mandarin said. Then he moved faster than Maximus could react and slapped him hard across the face, scratching Maximus' cheek with his long nails. "But that is for the insolence of breaking into my castle and helping yourself to my soup. Now, tell me how much use you can be to me should your 'cousins' stand against me again?"

"Much," Maximus said, looking back at the Mandarin with a wild grin and a dark look in his eyes.

_*This was in Amazing Adventures #3-4, set just before this series._

**June 28, 1972  
Attilan**

When Gorgon was angry everyone in the palace knew it. Not bothering to keep his powers in check, the clap of each hoof on the palace floors would shake each hallway or corridor through which he passed. Danse, his second-in-command and head of palace security, came running to intercept him on his long, lanky legs.

"Easy, sir!" Danse said. "Is something the matter?"

"You have to ask?" Gorgon fumed. "Hold on," he said, looking up and down the hallway while he calmed himself down. "Have you made any progress in finding our leak?" he asked in a lower register.

"No, sorry," Danse said, bending down slightly so he could talk back at the same hushed level.

The worried look on Danse's face anticipated a fit of rage from his boss, but Gorgon stayed calm and said, "I need to know who I cannot trust in the palace, Danse. Word was not meant to get out about the Mandarin being behind Medusa's abduction. Not yet."

"It has been a month, though, with no response. Even your most faithful palace guardsmen have to wonder why the retribution of the Royal Family has been so slow in coming."

"Such matters paled before the Third Coming of Galactus, of course*. We could only watch in admiration from the sidelines as the Fantastic Four saved us all again. But also we have learned our lessons from dealing with Maximus. He is too wily and has tricked us into attacking the Fantastic Four in the past by planting false evidence. If this is some trick to deceive us into rushing into battle against the Mandarin, we will not fall for it. We–"

*Go read some 1970s Fantastic Four!

Gorgon stopped at the sound of footsteps running down the hallway towards them. It was Haruwood, another loyal guardsman. As Haruwood spotted Gorgon and Danse, he slowed and adjusted the goggles over his bulging eyes. "Sirs, I am lucky to find you both! There is a scene fomenting outside the palace that you should come see!"

The 'scene' outside the main entrance of the palace was a small crowd of only eleven Inhumans, but what had sent Haruwood sprinting to find Danse or Gorgon was who was leading the crowd.

"Leonus!" Gorgon roared as he shoved wide the doors of the palace and stepped out onto the palace steps.

Leonus fell back, thinking he was about to be attacked and succeeded in bowling over some of his own supporters on the steps behind him.

"You are still an exile within the city, Leonus!" Gorgon roared, pointing an accusing finger at the lion-like Inhuman before him. "You are not allowed within sight of the palace walls, let alone on the palace steps! Black Bolt should never have spared you from returning to prison!"

"Is that not the way of Black Bolt? Too much mercy for enemies?" Leonus shot back. He was keeping a wary eye on Gorgon, but really speaking to the Inhumans behind him. "Isn't that why the Mandarin has still not stood trial for his misdeeds?"

Gorgon snarled as he took a menacing step towards Leonus.

"You wouldn't dare stomp your hoof here and risk damaging the royal palace steps?"

"You think I need the power of my wondrous hooves against the likes of you?" Gorgon asked with anger-tinged sarcasm.

Leonus' face snarled into a cruel smile and he roared as he jumped at Gorgon, grasping for him with clawed hands.

Gorgon stepped into the lunge and punched Leonus full in the chest. Leonus' momentum was violently reversed but he still managed to dig his claws into Gorgon's arm as he sailed past it, clutched it tight at the wrist and swung his body around to knee Gorgon in the side. Without turning or twisting to face him, Gorgon backhanded Leonus in the face with his grappled arm and not only forced Leonus to lose his grip but, being both off his feet and off-balance, sent Leonus tumbling backwards. Gorgon advanced on him quickly, seeing that Leonus was already in a controlled roll and coming out of it to a standing position. Gorgon boxed Leonus' ears from behind. Although Leonus' ears were partially shielded by his long mane, it still hurt and stunned him long enough that Leonus could not counterattack, but only turn around stumblingly to face Gorgon again.

Now they traded punches like boxers, most of the time blocking each other, but Leonus had the edge for speed and Gorgon found he was blocking more often than he was throwing punches. He even had to yield some ground to his faster opponent and retreat a few paces back towards the palace steps to give himself some room. He could have brought one hoof to bear at any moment and ended this, but he had foolishly sworn not to and would not dishonor himself. But then he realized he had only promised not to use a hoof. When Leonus next struck as him, Gorgon grabbed the fist and held it fast. When Leonus swung with his other fist, Gorgon held that fast as well, then he pulled Leonus in close and swung his knee up into Leonus' groin.

There was an audible gasp from the bystanders watching. Leonus' eyes rolled back and his mouth hung open, though the only sound to escape his lips was a slight "Ooo" noise. When Gorgon let go of his fists, Leonus dropped to the ground, rolled into a fetal position and cupped his hands over his injured crotch.

Gorgon did not expect cheers but he _did_ win and a little polite applause would have been nice. Instead, the bystanders, who had thinned out now from their original crowd, only gave him icy stares of contempt. Even Danse and Haruwood seemed to be looking at him disapprovingly. "Back to your homes! And take this vermin with you!" Gorgon shouted at the bystanders, while waving down at Leonus on the ground. He turned and trotted back up the palace steps towards his guardsmen. "What? You two think Leonus deserved better?" Gorgon asked in disbelief as he reached speaking range of them.

"Not us," Danse said, "but there are those who might think it was a …lopsided battle," he said, diplomatically.

"Maximus' allies certainly don't need to bolster their reputations as underdogs," Haruwood added.

"Bah! How I hate these politics!" Gorgon fumed. "Just get it all over with in one big fight, I say!" And with that, he stormed back into the palace.

**July 29, 1972  
Tibet. The Ruins of the Temple of Yin**

Medusa leaned back against a rock and watched patiently as Black Bolt stepped forward and surveyed the layout. So total had been the destruction of the entrance to the underground Temple of Yin after their battle with the Mandarin here that the terrain was almost impossible to recognize. When Black Bolt looked back at her, she gave him a knowing smile and pointed to the machine she held in one hand. "The instrument says this is the place," she added, reassuringly.

Black Bolt gave her a nod and went back to surveying. He stepped up to the boulders in front of him and laid a gloved hand on the nearest one. He looked all around the boulders, sizing them up. He glanced back at Medusa and smiled, which she read to mean that he was ready to try and move them. She wondered, for a moment, if he would simply lift them and toss them aside. They could not be more than 50 tons each, Medusa guessed, and it would be fun to watch him do that.

Black Bolt stepped back, though, and the antennae that rose over his forehead from his mask began to glow and sparkle. Black Bolt slowly raised his arms to either side, the folded fans under his arms unfolding as he did so. As his arms slowly rose, so did the boulders seem to mimic the motion. The boulders slowly shifted and stirred until the largest one levitated up off the ground entirely. Black Bolt directed it with gentle motions as he caused it to rise above the other boulders and float past them.

Comically, the boulder now looked like it was as light as a cloud and Medusa laughed at the thought.

Black Bolt held the boulder in mid-air while turning his gaze back to Medusa and gave her a laughing smile. Then he returned his concentration to the boulder, gestured wildly and made the boulder spin around in the air and crash madly into the rocks further away in the valley.

Medusa clapped earnestly, appreciating the show.

"Yes, that was most impressive," came a voice from the pass behind her.

Medusa spun around, silently cursing herself for having dropped her guard. Clearly the intruder had used the crashing of the boulder to conceal his footsteps. Her scarlet tresses lashed out like whips of steel and entangled the intruder.

"Oh my," the man said in Tibetan. He appeared to be a Tibetan or Chinese man in his late 30s, head shaved, wearing glasses and saffron robes. "I had prepared myself to expect the unexpected, yet this still surprises me."

Medusa was taken aback by how calmly the man responded and loosened her hold. "My apologies," she said in Tibetan. "You are a Buddhist monk by the look of you, yet you are far from any Buddhist temple."

"I have come in search of you," the monk said. "You are of that race of Man known as the Inhumans, are you not?"

"We are both alike and unalike the races of Man," she concurred, letting go of him altogether and pulling her hair back. "But if you had come seeking Inhumans, then yes, you have found us."

"Ah, excellent. Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Dalai Lama."

Medusa shot a glance at Black Bolt to see how he was reacting. He gave her a reassuring look to continue talking. "Why is the spiritual leader of Tibet looking for Inhumans?" she asked. "And doing so alone and unprotected?"

"I am not alone," the Dalai Lama said, waving his hand to the slopes behind him. Looking up, Medusa saw Tibetan men crouching behind rocks. "My escorts insisted on coming with me. They are armed, of course, though what protection they can offer me from two Inhumans is debatable, if what I have heard of the fabled powers of your race is true. As for why I have come, I have come seeking allies. I have traveled the world and visited the great nations of four continents, yet no where have I found allies who will aid my people in resisting the occupation of my country by China. I have sought you out as a last resort."

"Surely you know that the Hidden Refuge of the Inhumans is hidden for a reason," Medusa said. "We do not wish to be involved in the politics of our neighbors."

"I can imagine no political benefit would come to you in helping my people. I appeal to you on higher grounds than that. My people are oppressed. The Chinese government wishes to wipe away our very cultural identity."

"The problems of your people are not ours to fix."

"You speak of responsibility," the Dalai Lama said as he knelt down in the dirt. He produced from his hand a mustard seed and pressed it into the dry soil. "This mustard seed is unlikely to grow here on its own. It is not your responsibility to bring it water or to make sure the soil has nutrients. But suppose I insisted on standing over it and blocking the seed, so it received no water. Would you feel any responsibility to make me stand aside and give this seed a chance to grow?" His glasses had slid slightly down his nose and he pushed them back up as he looked up at Medusa.

Medusa, for her part, had shifted her weight to her hip and stood with her hands on her hips. Her hair moved about on its own behind her, like a shimmering crimson nimbus. She watched the Dalai Lama intently, but said nothing.

"I ask only that you come with me and observe the conditions in Tibet. See how the Chinese treat us and then decide for yourself if you should ask them to stand aside."

Medusa continued to stand and look at him for a moment longer. Then she turned back to Black Bolt. There was no judgment call in his eyes; he was clearly waiting for her decision. "I have to go," she told him.

**To Be Continued...**

**Next**: In the next chapter, what does Medusa decide about Tibet? Is the Mandarin-Maximus alliance over before it starts? And what does Chairman Mao have to say about all this? Find out these things and more next time in "If You Go Carrying Pictures of Chairman Mao!"


	17. Chapter 17

"_If You Go Carrying Pictures of…Chairman Mao"_

By Scott Casper

**(*Some dialogue is paraphrased from Surviving the Dragon: A Tibetan Lama's Account of 40 Years under Chinese Rule by Arija Rinpoche)**

**July 27, 1972  
Tibet**

Medusa and the Dalai Lama had crossed the Dolon Nor Steppe on horseback. Their horses trod a strip of road passing through lush and colorful fields of wildflowers dotted with white mushrooms. They passed a flock of white sheep and its herdsmen. They passed more simple tradesmen goading yaks along, with pack saddles mounted onto the yaks loaded with bags. As they did, the herdsmen and tradesmen stopped and prostrated themselves upon recognizing the Dalai Lama.

Inhuman and Tibetan both rode tall in the saddle, with Medusa's enormous head of hair and the Dalai Lama's tall golden hat. Medusa's mask drew curious stares from those who looked past her remarkable tresses or the distinctive blue and white tight bodysuit she wore that she had not favored since 1968.*

*_As worn in Marvel Super Heroes #15 ~Stylin' Scott_

Soon they reached their destination – Kumbum Monastery. Laid out like a feudal castle, the monastery required they approach it through one main gate in the curtain wall that surrounded it. It was in a horrible state of disrepair, with many of the interior buildings little more than ruins.

The Dalai Lama, a healthy man of 37 years, nimbly dismounted. "The Tibetan people are not naive," the Dalai Lama said after they dismounted. "We have no native superheroes. We expect no supernatural deliverance."

They led their horses up to the gates of the monastery, where monks waited and offered to take the reins of the steeds. "We have had centuries of experience with invaders, you know," the Dalai Lama continued.

"It was common practice, at this monastery, that when a powerful warlord came to the gates the abbot would give him gifts such as horses or rugs so that the monastery would be spared."

"And when the Chinese came, did you try the same tactic?" Medusa asked. She admired the colorful windows on the upper floors of the curtain wall around the monastery.

"We naturally assumed the Chinese Communists, if treated with the same diplomacy, would just as likely leave. You can tell that they have not."

"I have heard the Chinese said they liberated you from feudalism."

"If you trade one tyrant for a more powerful tyrant, are you truly liberated?"

Medusa involuntarily winced, thinking suddenly of her cousin Maximus.

Up ahead, a small contingent of monks stood patiently waiting for them to approach, a length of red carpet stretched out on the ground between them for the Dali Lama to walk upon. As they drew closer, the monks all bowed in unison to the Dalai Lama, who then bowed back. One monk stepped forward from the others.

"Welcome, Tenzin," the monk said to the Dalai Lama. "I offer you my title, and my apologies that we could not greet you in a manner befitting the occasion."

"I offer it back," the Dalai Lama said, referring to the protocol of titles, "and do not worry on the second matter. Some protocols must be observed to avoid close scrutiny on this trip." The Dalai Lama came forward, put a hand behind the monk's back, and led him towards Medusa. "Medusa, Royal Princess of Attilan, may I introduce you to the Arija Rinpoche, the abbot of this monastery. Arija, it is good to see you are well."

"As with you. You were wise to stay off the main roads. They are too watched."

"As I knew they would be. Please tell Medusa of your history with the Chinese occupation."

Arija nodded. "I was eight years old before I first encountered evil in this world. On that day, Chinese Communists arrested, humiliated and tortured hundreds of monks from our monastery. Beloved members of my household were bound, thrown into trucks and driven off to prison. Those monks not stolen away were beaten and tortured. Sometimes their hair was pulled out. Sometimes they were burned with cigarettes. Sometimes they were forced to drink urine from a bedpan. All of this was done because they had not confessed to crimes and renounced their religion."

"Can you imagine, Medusa, what it like to have others try to take your very identity from you?" the Dalai Lama asked.

Medusa winced again. Again it was about Maximus, who had stripped her identity from her, had left her an amnesiac criminal in Europe.

"This began when I was a boy, but it has never ended for us," Arija continued. "Famine comes to our land in waves, as China demands our foodstuffs when it is needed elsewhere in China. Many of our people have been forced to give up their nomadic ways and perform slave labor on farms. Thousands of monasteries, including this one, were attacked and damaged. Our art was destroyed, our sacred texts burnt. We have not been allowed to repair our sacred structures when they fall into disrepair. This monastery once housed 4,000 monks. It is now home to just hundreds."

"These are bold accusations and not unlike some the Dalai Lama himself made on our way here. What proof can you offer me of these accounts?"

"This is why we came here," the Dalai Lama said.

Arija nodded. He gestured and another monk produced a dusty leather valise. Looking around to see who was looking, the monk opened it, produced a handful of photographs, handed them to Arija, and he in turn put them in Medusa's gloved hand. "An uncle of mine was a great lover of photography," Arija continued to explain. "These photographs were among the saddest he ever took. It is illegal for these photographs to exist and we have hid them with great care, for this moment."

Medusa looked at the stark, black and white photographs of emaciated Tibetan corpses stacked in ditches. "The Fantastic Four did not come to your aid? Why not the Avengers?"

"This we would like to know," Arija said.

"It is my understanding that there is a great deal of enmity between the American superheroes and Red China," the Dalai Lama said, "but that the superheroes were able to broker a treaty with China four years ago. In exchange for staying out of Chinese affairs, China will stay out of certain countries bordering them. Tibet was not included in this treaty, no doubt because we were already occupied."

"The Fantastic Four are close friends with the Royal Family of Attilan," Medusa said. "We can contact them and insist that the treaty be renegotiated."

"You could," the Dalai Lama said, nodding. "It might possibly work. But it would take time. It took the American superheroes six years of work to earn the current treaty. It might take as long to rework it. In the meantime, China would correctly guess that Tibet asked for this help and punish us severely. This is why we have asked for Attilan's protection."

"Attilan has always stayed neutral in its neighbors' affairs. You ask us to overturn centuries of tradition."

"Then we will show you more so that you will see this course is wise."

**July 28, 1972  
Beijing, China  
Great Hall of the People**

The Congress Hall was over half full as the Central Committee sat in a rare session with a quorum of 86 members present. Almost all of them sat squirming in their seats, staring at the frowning face of Chairman Mao. Every exit from the chamber was blocked by twice as many armed guards as usual.

"Now to begin," Mao said. "Circumstances dictate we must act out of the traditional order of business. Ding Sang. Please stand up and report your findings to the committee."

"Yes, Mr. Chairman," Ding Sang said weakly as he leaned towards his microphone. "There have been sightings of the Dalai Lama, traveling through Tibet in the company of at least one masked individual wearing a colorful costume. They were last seen heading through the Dolon Nor Steppe, no doubt bound for Kumbum Monastery."

"It seems, if not clear, at least likely from this account," Mao said, "that the Dalai Lama has made contact with a superhero. Were you not tasked with making sure this would not happen?"

Ding Sang gulped. "I was."

"Ding Sang, you look thirsty," Mao said. "Please drink from the glass of water at your desk."

Ding Sang glanced at the glass of water. Then he glanced at two exits from the room and the weapons of the guards at each exit. His hand trembling, he reached for the glass of water, picked it up and drank half the contents of the glass.

"Ding Sang has taken ill," Mao said calmly. "It is likely that he will perish from it. I motion that he be relieved from duty so he may attempt to recover. Does anyone object? Very well, the motion is passed. Guards, please escort Ding Sang to the hospital."

Ding Sang was sweating already when the guards reached his desk. He feebly protested as they each took one of his arms and led him from the hall.

"This could be what we have been waiting for," Mao was already saying to the rest of the assembly. "We know that the people of Tibet hide from us a city that holds the secret of making superheroes. There must be no secrets that China does not possess! But we need better intelligence and we have no agents in the region up to the task. We have no choice…but to ask the Mandarin for aid."

**July 29, 1972  
Attilan  
Parliament**

"We understand the request is irregular!" Gorgon shouted to be heard.

Half of the Council of Geneticists stood up and howled in protest, echoed by a storm of howls from the protestors in the audience.

"Irregular?" Onran shouted over the din. "It is unprecedented!"

"Secrecy has ever been the hallmark of our society!" shouted Davain. "But first the Fantastic Four–"

"Who found us on their own!" Gorgon shouted, but half the audience could not hear him over the other half.

"—and were allowed to leave with our secrets!" Onran continued. "And now Princess Medusa is allowed to bring guests into the city?"

"Enough!" Triton shouted over all the voices. "Silence while royalty speaks!"

"You politicians quibble and equivocate," Gorgon continued angrily, "change the subject, and seek to divert us from the real issue at hand! This session was not called so you could rail about security issues! It is because your king has asked for your advice on the issue of annexing Tibet!"

"They are the same issue!" Davain shouted. "How could we remain a secret city once we became the capital of Tibet?"

"Tibetans would be walking in and out of Attilan on a daily basis!" Onran shouted.

"Maximus would not have–" Bagar began to shout.

"Who are you comparing to a traitor?" Gorgon shouted, this time louder than anyone.

That quieted things down enough that Triton no longer needed to shout. "I urge the Council to immediately establish a commission to investigate the issue of security," he said. "But I also insist the Council address the issue, not of precedent, but legality. What is the rule of law on annexation?"

The room grew quieter, as did the angrier Geneticists. Bagar visibly fumed as he slunk back into his chair. Onran and Davain looked defiant but said nothing. They looked to Blue Parrish. The elder councilman stroked the long sideburns that hung down below his chin, no doubt a telling signal to the councilors most loyal to him.

"It can be done," came the voice of Daker, a councilman with feathers instead of hair, who had long voted in favor of the Royal Family while on the Council. "My aides and I have studied the ancient records thoroughly and, while nothing of this magnitude has ever been attempted, there have been plenty of occasions when smaller tracts of land were absorbed into the State of Attilan."

Onran and Davain began to protest, but Gorgon and Triton just exchanged a knowing look to each other. No matter what else came out of these proceedings now, they had what they wanted. Daker could draft the legislation they needed. An unexpected bonus was Bagar's outburst about Maximus, as now they could label any councilors opposing annexation as Maximus loyalists. But, best of all, they had bought their king some time so Black Bolt could decide if he wanted annexation at all.

**July 30, 1972  
Tibet. The Ruins of the Temple of Yin**

In a lonely, barren valley surrounded by mountains, where no building had stood for centuries, there now stood revealed again the long-buried Temple of Yin. A bulldozer of Tilanese design sat unmoving near ages-old stone architecture of a style that was not Tibetan, nor Chinese, nor Indian, yet somehow fused all three. It had taken some weeks to clear all the rubble away. What the bulldozer could not do with enough precision, Black Bolt had stayed and done with his own powers.

Black Bolt stood nearby, surveying the ruins while Karnak ran his scan with the universal weapon that all Seekers of Attilan carried.

"Still nothing," Karnak said. "I am surprised you wished to come back to this dead end. We came to explore these ruins before* because our history with the Mandarin was here**. And, true, on our first approach we detected the same energy signature from the Mandarin's scrambler coming from the temple ruins, but there has been no trace of it since."

* Amazing Adventures of the 1970s: Featuring the Inhumans #14  
** Amazing Adventures #4

Black Bolt simply nodded, walked past Karnak and stepped up through the front entrance of the temple.

Karnak sighed. "It never pays to argue with that man," he grumbled before following.

Black Bolt's antennae began to crackle with an electric blue glow – not to attack but to light up the cavernous interior. Karnak followed suite, pressing a stud on the universal weapon that turned it into an oversized flashlight.

The inside of the temple was littered with debris from a partial-ceiling collapse and huge slabs of the ceiling were supported, at treacherous-looking angles, by partially smashed columns leaning underneath them. Black Bolt and Karnak picked their way carefully through the debris, following a ramp down into the lower levels of the temple where four-armed statues that looked like a cross between Buddha and some weird alien sat cross-legged. Though caked in dust and grime, gems were still visible set in the statues. Black Bolt and Karnak ignored the fortune in jewels they passed and moved to the statue that once held the Eye of Yin. Black Bolt turned and pointed to the statue.

"What, scan here? If you wish…" Karnak thought this whole excursion was just an excuse to get away from the rough state of Attilan politics these days, but he said none of his private thoughts. He adjusted again the dial on the weapon that activated a Geiger counter-like device inside it. Karnak kept adjusting, modulating the detector through many frequencies, before he was distracted out of his thoughts by the 'ping' sound that his weapon started making. "You're right! I _do_ have a reading!" Karnak moved forward slowly across the dais. "But why? Some residual power from the fractured Eye of Yin?" he mused out loud, looking to Black Bolt for some confirmation that this was what his liege had expected.

But Black Bolt looked as puzzled as Karnak did and gestured for Karnak to circle around the dais on which the large statue stood.

"No, you're right, it's coming from behind the back wall instead! If you would be so kind…?" he said, holding out the universal weapon for Black Bolt to take.

Black Bolt complied and Karnak, both hands free, began feeling with his fingertips along the back wall. "Hmm…a secret door here. I could take the time to find the mechanism that opens it, or…" Karnak stepped back and delivered an open-handed strike to one edge of the secret door. The hidden lock inside cracked and the door popped open. "Here," Karnak said, motioning for Black Bolt to hand the universal weapon back to him. "Follow me," he added once he had it.

Through the secret door was a passage, roughly hewn from the stone of the mountain. The passage soon led into a cave with dry, hanging stalactites, but a smoothly hewn floor. There was engraved writing on every wall of the cave and, surprisingly, some of the words glowed with an electrical ambience not unlike that which came from Black Bolt's antennae.

"They are Chinese characters!" Karnak declared upon closer examination. "I can read them…but there's so much to read! There's a whole history written on these walls. But the glowing letters, they all say the same thing. 'The Way Is Shut.' But what can it mean?"

Karnak actually looked to Black Bolt, who could only shrug in response. Black Bolt then pointed to the universal weapon again. The detector was turned off; Black Bolt had done it when the weapon was handed off to him. Now Karnak turned the knob and re-activated it.

The glowing letters suddenly flared in intensity. Around the cave, the glow began to blink on and off in what seemed a random pattern.

Karnak stepped back into the center of the cave for a better look. The blinking was growing more rapid at the far end of the cave, where it was also narrowest.

Black Bolt stepped boldly across the cave towards the narrow end.

"Wait!" Karnak said, jumping ahead of Black Bolt and putting up a hand to block him. "There could be–"

But Karnak never finished his sentence. There was a brilliant flash of white light that blinded both of them. When Black Bolt could see again, Karnak was gone.

**Meanwhile  
Near Lhasa, Tibet**

It was a lonely trail on the side of a mountain a full four miles from Lhasa, administrative capital and a prefecture-level city of the 'Tibet Autonomous Region', as the People's Republic of China called it. Medusa and the Dalai Lama, still on horseback for stealth rather than speed, had slowly made their way to this point, almost 3,500 meters above sea level. Their steeds hailed from a sturdy breed bred for the mountains, but Medusa and the Dalai Lama were wrapped in heavy furs, both for warmth and concealment of their identities.

"You see?" the Dalai Lama asked calmly.

Medusa lowered her binoculars. She had seen enough of the Chinese military air base hidden here in the mountains. It was a massive complex, surrounded by barracks and hangars and fences and towers, with five paved airstrips loaded with jets. It seemed a new plane was taking off or landing every few minutes with remarkable precision.

"That base must house 5,000 soldiers. Why so much activity?" Medusa asked.

"Need you guess?" the Dalai Lama asked. "Do you think the Chinese demonstrate their air superiority for our benefit? There can be only one explanation, one goal they must accomplish from the air – the discovery of your people's secret city."

"They will fail," Medusa said. "Our technology shields detection of the city from the air. We have used such since Man invented his first airplane."

"Are you so certain of this?"

"No…in all honesty, Human society bridges the technological gap with us more and more all the time."

"We have shown you why Tibet needs the protection of Attilan from China. Now I have shown you that Attilan is itself in danger. Are you still so certain you can maintain your neutrality?"

Medusa did not pause long at all before making her decision; so much of it had already been made. "I must go down into that base and find out for certain of their purpose. If it is as you say…I swear to you that Attilan will aid and protect Tibet."

**Meanwhile  
Somewhere..dark **

"What place is this…?" Karnak adjusted the light-emitter on the universal weapon and let more light into his new surroundings. He was inside an old stone structure, seemingly also underground, but the architecture had changed. There were almost none of the trappings of Oriental design here, but a blunter aesthetic instead.

"Black Bolt!" Karnak yelled as he spun around, but there was no sign of his liege anywhere. He was standing in what, aboveground, would have appeared to have been a small courtyard surrounded by arcades and, above the arcades, a solar. There were archways both on this level and the level above. The pillars of the arcades were adorned with caryatids. "No…I am alone in this place…" Karnak mused out loud to himself. He trod cautiously to the nearest pillars and touched his hand to them. "There is a hum to this place. Some distant machinery? It cannot be the Temple of Yin…"

Karnak continued to move across the courtyard, following the pillars to a corner. Here were two archways. Through one he saw stairs going up and, through the other, he saw natural light filtering in from above, shining down on a fountain basin from which he could hear the trickling of water. "Could this have been the home of the ancient race of Yin?" he mused as he moved to the archway leading to the fountain.

"Yin?" came a voice from the archway to the stairs. "Yes…visitors once called this place Yin," the armored man said as he stepped into Karnak's light, "but it has always been known by me by its proper name of Avalon. So says…Prester John!"

**To Be Continued...**

**Next**: In the next chapter, what is the connection of Avalon to Tibet? Karnak gets a history lesson from Prester John! And, as the Inhumans prepare to make their move against China, the Mandarin finally makes his move against them! War is brewing in…"Now Shalt Thou Gather Thyself in Troops!" Don't miss it!


	18. Chapter 18

"_Now Shalt Thou Gather Thyself in Troops"_

By Scott Casper

**Thanks to Samuel Taylor Coleridge**

**August 6, 1972  
Lhasa Gonggor Airport, Tibet**

It was an unusual location for an airport, guarding the entrance to the Namrab Valley, surrounded by towering mountains standing four miles high. It was a lonely place, seemingly isolated from the world despite the air traffic that normally came and went with some frequency. But there were no planes flying right now. The entire airport was on lock down. Alarm sirens blared and lights flashed all over. Five hundred soldiers were searching the entire complex in squads of twenty. They were expecting to find a small rebel force on the base. They were not expecting one person. And they were certainly not expecting Medusa.

Medusa had used the last few days wisely, studying the base from a distance and planning a major diversion on the far side of the valley. Just a few explosions had created the impression that the valley was under attack and most of the troops had been predictably moved out en masse to respond. They were likely on their way back to base now, responding to the real threat, which did not give Medusa much time.

The last of a search squad filed out of the communications room, giving Medusa time to drop down out of the tight fit of the air vent, plus at least a few more minutes until the room was checked again. Medusa lowered herself silently by her hair to the floor in front of the radio equipment. She used her hair like a screwdriver to carefully remove an access panel and, by hand, removed some bugging devices from her tool belt. As her hair screwed the access panel back on after she hid the bugs inside, she looked around the room and her gaze fell on a telecopier. She was hoping the Chinese were using a device like this already, as she had another device on her tool belt that could 'trick' a telecopier into reprinting the last transmissions it received, but she did not even need it – lazy soldiers had left the last six 'faxed' orders in the paper tray. She fished them out and looked them over.

One of the transmissions was a facsimile of an aerial reconnaissance photo, clearly shot somewhere in the mountains. "What are those…?" Medusa whispered out loud as she stared closer at the photo and tried to make out the man-shaped objects in the photo. She glanced at the neighboring sheets and found the orders that accompanied the photo. The words 'Mandarin', 'approved', and 'do not engage' jumped out as her as she tried to quickly translate by the dim light in the room.

After folding up the sheets and tucking them into a pouch on her belt, Medusa produced her 'telecopier tricker' off of her belt. She felt a little paranoid doing so, but just in case the papers in the tray were plants left for a snoop it paid to stay and make the extra effort. With a press of a button, the handheld device began scanning transmission wavelengths for the telecopier, finding the one that would activate it.

As the telecopier began slowly scanning lines of a transmission, Medusa realized the Chinese telecopiers were not only much slower than the ones they had in Attilan but much louder. She moved to the door to listen for anyone coming. Two minutes later the page still was not done scanning, but booted feet were definitely approaching her door. She could not risk being spotted here and drawing attention to the electronic bugs, so it was back into the air vent for her.

A second squad of soldiers burst into the communications room and found it empty, as Medusa had closed the vent's grille behind her with moments to spare. Indeed, the room looked clear enough that most of the soldiers did not even bother coming in, but five did, perhaps just out of curiosity about the incoming fax.

"I tell you, we should be checking the vents," one was saying, pointing with his rifle towards the ceiling vent.

"Don't be ridiculous," another soldier told him. "No one is going to be in an air vent."

"If I were trying to hide, I would use an air vent. Or a janitor's closet," said another.

"We already checked the janitor's closet."

"I'm just saying, those air shafts are not big enough for someone to fit in."

"How do you know? Did you build this place?"

"Look, this is easy to solve. Just let me get a chair so I can go up there for a closer look…"

Medusa let out a quiet sigh. Clearly this was not going to be easy anymore. She mentally pulled back a thick lock of hair and used it to punch through the vent grille, knocking the broken pieces of the grille into the face of the soldier directly below it. Before the soldiers could react, two thin locks of long red hair tumbled down into the room, grabbed the heads of the two closest soldiers and bashed their heads together. Then, with impossible strength, the hair picked the two men up and held them like shields for cover as Medusa lowered herself from the grille.

"If you're clear, take the shot!" one of the soldiers shouted as the remaining three fanned out. Medusa tossed her living shields one at a time into two more soldiers, knocking all but one of them to the floor and that remaining soldier she whipped with her hair hard enough to knock into the wall. As the last of her opponents slumped to the floor, she snatched up the last sheet from the telecopier just as it was coming out and she bolted for the door.

Medusa did not make it far down the corridor outside the room before she saw a soldier come around the corner ahead of her and block her path. She could hear more soldiers coming from the opposite direction, behind her, and they were close to rounding a corner themselves.

"Stay where you are! Put up your hands!" the soldier facing her down shouted in Chinese while he took aim with his Type 50, drum magazine-fed sub-machine gun.

Medusa was not about to surrender and luckily did not have to; the wall to her right was an outside-facing wall lined with windows. She swung her hair through the glass, shattering it and sending shards flying down the hallway towards the gunman facing her. He fired blindly while ducking around the corner to avoid the glass missiles, but missed. Medusa dropped a stiff lock of hair to the floor, kicked her legs up into the air, and used her hair to pole vault through the broken window and out of the line of fire.

The two towers overlooking the air base were flashing searchlights all over in search of intruders and Medusa saw soldiers in three directions. Medusa sprinted toward the smallest group of them while locks of her hair pulled grenades off a baldric she was wearing over her shoulder. Her hair lobbed the grenades towards each group, grenades that exploded into clouds of thick smoke. One of the searchlights found Medusa and shone on her as she continued sprinting, but no one had a clear line-of-sight to draw a bead on her before she reached the smoke cloud, took a deep breath, and dove in. She could see shapes moving nearby in the cloud and heard they were soldiers choking. One of the shapes moved closer, a soldier who managed to get his gas mask in place in time. Her hair whipped the sub-machine gun out of his hands, then she slapped him across the face hard enough to knock him to the ground.

Before she emerged from the cloud on the other side, Medusa heard a jeep driving past. She reached out with locks of hair and grabbed onto the jeep, then lifted herself out of the cloud, off the ground and over the jeep. She kicked a passenger out of the jeep, wrapped a length of hair around the driver, picked him up out of his seat and tossed him out the other side of the jeep. Taking over the wheel, Medusa steered for the west fence of the air base, but found a full score of soldiers lining up on her left flank, getting ready to shoot. She would not reach the fence in time; Medusa needed cover now.

She anchored her hair to the jeep in as many places as she could, then pulled hard with the hair on the left side of her head just as the shooting started. A hail of bullets tore into the jeep as it tipped over and slid across the ground, carried by its own momentum with Medusa running behind it. Only when the jeep slid to a stop did Medusa change direction and run north away from the jeep. Medusa was not overly familiar with this type of vehicle, but if its fuel tank was anywhere near the exposed bottom then a bullet should be striking it any moment now.

As she ran, a spotlight struggled to keep pace with her and more soldiers were showing up to the east and spotting her. She had enough time to grab a flare pistol off her belt with her hand while her hair snatched more smoke grenades off her baldric and threw them. The jeep exploded behind her and a lot of the shooting stopped as soldiers ducked for cover. Medusa fired a flare into the air, but did not stop running. Only being a moving target was keeping the stray shots from hitting her, or the soldiers from surrounding her.

But their numbers were overwhelming and she could only create chaos to keep them disorganized for so long. More and more soldiers were coming through the smoke clouds wearing gas masks now. Instead of running from them, she stayed close to them now, using soldiers as living shields while her hair swept others off their feet. They were coming faster than she could take them down. She would be overwhelmed soon.

Or she would have been had Lockjaw not appeared next to her in a flash of light.

With a growl, Lockjaw threw his mass into the soldiers flanking Medusa and bowled them over. Then he turned back to Medusa, touched his muzzle to her arm and, with a flash of light, they were both gone.

**August 12, 1972  
Attilan**

Lockjaw arrived with a flash of light in the royal palace, but this time it was Crystal beside him. Crystal looked around and recognized one of the living rooms of the royal palace, all-white, curved corners and high-ceilinged, but with comfortable, pastel-colored furniture that reflected the royal family's acquired taste for American styles. She also saw her sister Medusa, dressed in white and blue and missing her face mask, and smiled. Medusa smiled too and the women hugged.

When they let go of their embrace, Medusa could not take her eyes off of Crystal's stomach. "Oh my genes," Medusa exclaimed, "look at you! My little sister, eight months pregnant!"

Crystal rubbed her stomach through a loose top version of her old familiar yellow outfit. "Oh yes," she said, blushing slightly. "Thank you, Lockjaw!" she said, scratching his ear. "Medusa, you've got to feel the baby kicking. Hold on…I thought I felt it over here, but it's shifted again."

"You mean you don't even know the gender yet? A natural pregnancy and no genetic test readings? When did you become so old-fashioned?" Medusa teased.

"Oh, stop it! John wants it to be a surprise and I wanted to respect his wishes. Now, how long do we have to visit before you have to go?"

From the doorway of the room, Triton cleared his throat.

"It looks like no time at all!" Medusa moaned. "Gorgon is going with Lockjaw to try to find Karnak. Black Bolt, Triton and I are taking a small reconnaissance team back into China to see if we can learn what they're up to and if the Mandarin is involved."

"Because of some picture you found on an airport base?"

"A picture that looked like, when we magnified it, robots being assembled in broad daylight and the memos that went with it implicating the Mandarin, yes."

"Everyone else has exciting stuff to do, and on my first day back in Attilan I'm stuck babysitting the Genetics Council?" Crystal asked with an earnestly jealous tone.

"This is important, Crystal. Maximus has been up to no good again. We're not sure what his plan is, but he seems to be firing up an anti-royalty sentiment in Attilan and we cannot afford to lose the support of the Council now, not when we have the Mandarin, the Chinese government and a missing Karnak to deal with."

Crystal watched Lockjaw walk around the room, circle around in one spot, and then flop down on the floor of the room by a plush chair and sniff the dust ruffle around the bottom of the chair. "Yes, yes, I know how to deal with important things now," Crystal said in a dismissive voice, "I'm not a little girl anymore." She walked over to Lockjaw. "Come on, no being lazy," Crystal told Lockjaw as she playfully batted his ear. "Go find Gorgon."

Lockjaw snorted, then rose to his feet and padded off out of the room.

"We need to be going too," Triton said to Medusa. "Nice to see you again," he said to Crystal. "Congratulations on the baby."

Crystal begged Medusa to stay and touch her belly once before they parted. With that ritual of pregnant women everywhere completed, Medusa and Triton sped off through the halls of the palace to rejoin Black Bolt.

Black Bolt was waiting outside in the palace's largest courtyard, watching over nine soldiers who stood at attention. Black Bolt turned and gave a welcoming gesture to Medusa and Triton as they arrived.

Medusa recognized Danse and Haruwood amongst the soldiers and thought them good choices. "I hope we are not late," Medusa said. "Is this everyone?"

Black Bolt nodded. Then he pointed to the two flying ships on the landing pad by them. The ships had the basic form of helicopters, elongated to the length of small trucks. The runners on the ground doubled as powerful electromagnets that powered the ships' levitation. They also ran silent and the electromagnetic field would disrupt conventional radar. They were good vessels for reconnaissance, Medusa knew, but she was silently concerned about the small size of their force. They had gone into Latvia with a larger force than this and still been captured by Doctor Doom. She was confident that Black Bolt knew what he was doing, but she also knew that even a king's resources could be spread too thin and that this likely played right into Maximus' plans, whatever they were.

**Northeast Africa. The Sahara Desert  
The Sunken City of Avalon  
One hour later**

The air hung heavy with the scent of incense from one of the lit braziers that illuminated this chamber. Karnak shut the cover of another large, dusty tome. "Remarkable! My Latin could be better, but if I understand what I have read, then you were right, Prester John."

"I would not have spoke to you falsely," Prester John said from across the windowless history wing of the great library. John stood in repose, his hands clasped behind his back, clad in loose-fitting robes instead of mail beneath his fur-trimmed tunic. "I have been touched by angels of late and it has made me a…nobler man."*

*_See 1970s Fantastic Four #11 - Scott_

"Yes, the people we once knew as the People of Yinn were in fact your people of Avalon; this travel log confirms it. I marvel that they had 'magic gates' that allowed them to teleport vast distances, though my people also had advanced technology in an earlier age. But it concerns me where it spoke of how they sought the 'hidden land'. My land has long been known as the Hidden Land. What did the people of Avalon wish from my people?"

"Let me see if I may shed light on that with this," John said as he moved across the room, picked up a book and flipped it open as he approached Karnak. John read out loud, "In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a royal pleasure dome decree…"

"I know that poem well," Karnak said with a nod as he leaned back in his chair. "Even in my xenophobic land."

"Sirrah?" John asked, looking puzzled.

"_Kublai Khan_, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge."

"No…"

"Well, of course. Written in the late 18th century."

"Nay, sir." John was now close enough to show Karnak the title page. It clearly read _Being an Account of the Journeys to the East of Prester John_ and was dated 1077. "This work is my own."

"That is impossible."

"And yet, here it is."

"Let me see," Karnak said as he took the book and flipped through it. "This section is identical to the poem I know."

"I did fancy myself a poet as the mood struck me," John said with a grin and a twirl of his red mustache. "The pleasure dome I found particularly inspirational."

"Then you also assert that this is all true?"

"Every word."

"I must see more…" Karnak said as he flipped through more pages. "What time is it? I do not think I have ever read so much so quickly."

Only when Karnak noticed John did not respond did Karnak look up to find Prester John had taken several steps back. "John…is something amiss about the time?" The more Karnak thought about it, it seemed like he had been reading for an impossibly long time.

"I will not lie…like the Chair of Survival in which I slumbered through the centuries, this library has certain properties to allow a man to read all he desires without need for food or sleep."

"How long have I been here?" Karnak asked, now springing up from his chair.

"Three weeks."

"Impossible!" Karnak exclaimed. Then another thought came to him. "You meant for this to happen. You meant to keep me a prisoner! You called yourself a noble man!"

"Aye, and noble man I may call myself still, for ever has it been my sacred task to keep the secrets of Avalon from leaving these–"

Karnak began a lunge to reach John and, with his speed, should have reached him before he could defend himself. But John had only to wave his hand over a neighboring brazier and Karnak was suddenly bowled off his feet by an opponent he neither saw nor heard.

"The Evil Eye may have been taken from me, but still I am not without tools for the defense of the realm," Prester John said.*

*_As seen in Prester John's jazzy comic book debut back in Fantastic Four #54_

Karnak tumbled back and took a defensive stance in a low crouch. He strained his every sense, but his attacker seemed to be no more than the air itself. Indeed, the air was even now starting to swirl into a tiny tornado in front of him, tossing books off of shelves as it drew near him…

**To Be Continued...**

**Next**: In _Inhumans #17_: Does Gorgon and Lockjaw reach Karnak in time? Does Black Bolt learn what he needs in China? Time is running out because the Mandarin is ready to make his move and next month is "Invasion!" Don't miss it!


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